Should Penn State Get the Death Penalty?

[RaiderH8r]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

It's not about whether they are embarrassed. We are talking about stripping away educational opportunities for innocent students and job opportunities for innocent faculty members, losing funding for all athletic programs that are not related to football, and creating an even greater cost for taxpayers.

We're talking about a taxpayer-driven institution with a football program that makes $50M a year, much of which either funds other athletic programs or goes back into the school.

And being a fan of a team or rallying around a scumbag are not crimes. We have to take emotion out of this. Just because you root for the wrong things does not mean the law should punish you for it.

Even if PSU went away entirely it isn't the end of education FFS. Get new jobs, go to new schools and curse the names of Sandusky and JoPa.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by RaiderH8r

Even if PSU went away entirely it isn't the end of education FFS. Get new jobs, go to new schools and curse the names of Sandusky and JoPa.

[RaiderH8r]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

If it were a corporation engaged in this sort of cover up they'd be burned to the ground. Why should PSU be treated any differently?

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by RaiderH8r

If it were a corporation engaged in this sort of cover up they'd be burned to the ground. Why should PSU be treated any differently?

Because this isn't a corporation. This is an institution with an $8.5B economic impact and the lifeblood of the state of Pennsylvania. It encourages Pennsylvania residents to stay in state, provides affordable tuition to good students, and then turns those students into future employed Americans who usually stay in-state to keep Pennsylvania's economy running. It is a public institution that, if it fails, Pennsylvania residents will have to foot the bill for the $8.5B per year (and beyond) of loss of impact.

The stats are below:
http://econimpact.psu.edu/

So you're telling the state of Pennsylvania that they should suck it up and lose $8.5B? You're telling students that they should just move to a new state or suck it up and pay a higher tuition rate because they were dumb enough to live in a state that funded Penn State? You're going to tell 44,000 faculty members and staff that they should get their walking papers, not because the university folded, but because some overzealous regulator decided they needed to go above and beyond the necessary punishment?

This isn't just a football program that happens to have a school attached to it. This is a critical piece to the Pennsylvania economy.

[BigRock]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

Because this isn't a corporation. This is an institution with an $8.5B economic impact and the lifeblood of the state of Pennsylvania. It encourages Pennsylvania residents to stay in state, provides affordable tuition to good students, and then turns those students into future employed Americans who usually stay in-state to keep Pennsylvania's economy running. It is a public institution that, if it fails, Pennsylvania residents will have to foot the bill for the $8.5B per year (and beyond) of loss of impact.

The stats are below:
http://econimpact.psu.edu/

So you're telling the state of Pennsylvania that they should suck it up and lose $8.5B? You're telling students that they should just move to a new state or suck it up and pay a higher tuition rate because they were dumb enough to live in a state that funded Penn State? You're going to tell 44,000 faculty members and staff that they should get their walking papers, not because the university folded, but because some overzealous regulator decided they needed to go above and beyond the necessary punishment?

This isn't just a football program that happens to have a school attached to it. This is a critical piece to the Pennsylvania economy.

We can't do that kind of harm to Penn State football. The sport of football is just too important to the university.

SAVE THE PROGRAM, SAVE THE WORLD.

Signed,
Graham Spanier, Tim Curley, and Joe Paterno

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by BigRock

We can't do that kind of harm to Penn State football. The sport of football is just too important to the university.

SAVE THE PROGRAM, SAVE THE WORLD.

Signed,
Graham Spanier, Tim Curley, and Joe Paterno

Sadly, there is truth to the statement that it's important (critical, in fact) to the university. It's also critical to the state of Pennsylvania.

And we're all discussing ways to punish the program and those involved without throwing a death blow to the university and laying a big hit to the state of Pennsylvania. It's the reason why the death penalty doesn't happen anymore in sports.

[BigRock]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

Sadly, there is truth to the statement that it's important (critical, in fact) to the university.

And do you know what that means? When a football program is critical to the survival of an academic institution? It means that somewhere along the line, things have gone astray.

But by all means, let's figure out a way to make sure we preserve the skewed reality where football rules everything and must be protected. I mean, it's not like that exact same mindset caused this entire situation in the first place.

Wait, what's that? It did? I stand corrected.

[manchambo]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

Because this isn't a corporation. This is an institution with an $8.5B economic impact and the lifeblood of the state of Pennsylvania. It encourages Pennsylvania residents to stay in state, provides affordable tuition to good students, and then turns those students into future employed Americans who usually stay in-state to keep Pennsylvania's economy running. It is a public institution that, if it fails, Pennsylvania residents will have to foot the bill for the $8.5B per year (and beyond) of loss of impact.

The stats are below:
http://econimpact.psu.edu/

So you're telling the state of Pennsylvania that they should suck it up and lose $8.5B? You're telling students that they should just move to a new state or suck it up and pay a higher tuition rate because they were dumb enough to live in a state that funded Penn State? You're going to tell 44,000 faculty members and staff that they should get their walking papers, not because the university folded, but because some overzealous regulator decided they needed to go above and beyond the necessary punishment?

This isn't just a football program that happens to have a school attached to it. This is a critical piece to the Pennsylvania economy.

Can we overstate the importance of penn state football any more? Maybe the whole state of Pennsylvania would fail. And if that happened, would the united states be far behind?

Back in reality, there is zero reason to think that losing football for a few years would appreciably affect the well being of the school as a whole. Some reality checks: are there thriving schools without football programs? Of course. Are there thriving schools that have football programs that are lucky to break even or at best turn an insignificant profit? Oh my god yes. In fact that probably describes the majority. Finally, did SMU curl up and die? Of course not.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by manchambo

Can we overstate the importance of penn state football any more? Maybe the whole state of Pennsylvania would fail. And if that happened, would the united states be far behind?

You are talking about 44,000 jobs lost. You are talking about 100,00 students per year who will either have to resort for higher tuition or reduced quality of education. You are talking about stripping one of the most critical ways Pennsylvania is able to keep students and good residents in state. You are talking about potentially stripping away scholarships or affordable tuition to a 17-year old student who can't afford a private institution but has worked her ass off her entire life to get straight A's so she can get into Penn State. You are talking about stripping away $8.5B of economic impact. Indirectly, you are talking about taking away good future lawyers, doctors, businesspeople, etc.... And you're not even factoring the massive amounts of help state schools provide to businesses in terms of expertise, research, etc.... Penn State is one of the lifebloods, for example, of the Pennsylvania farming industry. I think it's rather hilarious that people actually think you can take a public university of that magnitude away and think it wouldn't have a devastating economic effect.

Back in reality, there is zero reason to think that losing football for a few years would appreciably affect the well being of the school as a whole. Some reality checks: are there thriving schools without football programs? Of course. Are there thriving schools that have football programs that are lucky to break even or at best turn an insignificant profit? Oh my god yes. In fact that probably describes the majority. Finally, did SMU curl up and die? Of course not.

Penn State is a school that enrolls 100,000 students. It is an extremely expensive school to run. You have to employ the faculty to cover all those students, pay for facilities, and have students that pay the room & board to house them because any reasonable person knows that the further you are from capacity to fill a building, the more your costs go up. Many schools thrive without a competitive program because they have higher tuition rates or else they don't offer quality educational programming. Most schools don't have the challenge of attracting 100,000 students in order to keep the school running. In most cases, they're happy with a few thousand.

More importantly, we know the direct impact. We're talking about $50M in direct losses if you take away their home games. I can't even imagine how many millions of dollars would be lost in alumni donations. You're talking about hundreds of millions dollars lost.

But like you said... no big deal. Most universities have hundreds of millions of dollars in money just lying around to cover it.

[RaiderH8r]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

You are talking about 44,000 jobs lost. You are talking about 100,00 students per year who will either have to resort for higher tuition or reduced quality of education. You are talking about stripping one of the most critical ways Pennsylvania is able to keep students and good residents in state. You are talking about potentially stripping away scholarships or affordable tuition to a 17-year old student who can't afford a private institution but has worked her ass off her entire life to get straight A's so she can get into Penn State. You are talking about stripping away $8.5B of economic impact. Indirectly, you are talking about taking away good future lawyers, doctors, businesspeople, etc.... And you're not even factoring the massive amounts of help state schools provide to businesses in terms of expertise, research, etc.... Penn State is one of the lifebloods, for example, of the Pennsylvania farming industry. I think it's rather hilarious that people actually think you can take a public university of that magnitude away and think it wouldn't have a devastating economic effect.



Penn State is a school that enrolls 100,000 students. It is an extremely expensive school to run. You have to employ the faculty to cover all those students, pay for facilities, and have students that pay the room & board to house them because any reasonable person knows that the further you are from capacity to fill a building, the more your costs go up. Many schools thrive without a competitive program because they have higher tuition rates or else they don't offer quality educational programming. Most schools don't have the challenge of attracting 100,000 students in order to keep the school running. In most cases, they're happy with a few thousand.

More importantly, we know the direct impact. We're talking about $50M in direct losses if you take away their home games. I can't even imagine how many millions of dollars would be lost in alumni donations. You're talking about hundreds of millions dollars lost.

But like you said... no big deal. Most universities have hundreds of millions of dollars in money just lying around to cover it.

Let'em dip into that endowment. Let the alumni hold a bake sale. Is it going to hurt? Hell yes. That's the point. This shit happens frequently. Offshore oil production is a hell of a lot larger economic driver to the gulf coast than PSU and nobody blinked when the US unilaterally shut it down for about a year. BFD, life will go on. If there is a void it will be filled. PSU can operate away on endowments and alumni til their tits tickle but be ****ed if public dollars get used to pay for the rape and institutional complicity. If the state of PA wants to fund the school I guess that's their prerogative but federal money should be spent shutting down and moving projects out of PSU ahead of cutting all federal money pending the final outcome of the final trial related to this.