LITTLE ROCK — MIKE WISE
The Washington Post
“The NCAA president dropped the ball by not forbidding Penn State to play football for at least a year in the wake of a child sexual abuse scandal, a tragedy that went all the way to the top of the university and its main cash cow, Joe Paterno’s poisoned program.
“Emmert took away money, scholarships and all but congratulated himself and the organization for administering what he called ‘unprecedented’ penalties, punitive measures that went far and beyond, he said, the NCAA’s sentencing guidelines. But he let the games go on.
“He merely showed us the same thing the late Paterno, former Penn State president Graham Spanier and two functionaries now facing criminal charges for their roles in the cover-up showed us: That no matter how heinous the scandal, college football must go on.”
TIM DAHLBERG
The Associated Press
“That the punishment was accepted so meekly and quickly by Penn State was an indication of how desperate the university is to find some way - any way - to begin crawling out from the morass created by a monster and his eager enablers. There is no moving forward without falling on the sword, and the people who replaced the Paterno lemmings at Penn State seem to have figured that out.” SI.COM Stewart Mandel
“The legacy of the Penn State scandal will no longer be Jerry Sandusky’s heinous crimes or the courageous victims who stood up to him. Thanks to a brazen power play and a carefully orchestrated PR extravaganza, this human tragedy will take a backseat over the next four years (or longer) to a more trivial narrative: Whether Penn State football can recover from crippling NCAA sanctions.”
YAHOO SPORTS
Dan Wetzel
“Penn State is now a pile of rubble, facing an uncertain future. That reality is part of the legacy of [Joe] Paterno, who built the program to stratospheric heights only to leave it an unmitigated disaster.”
CBSSPORTS.COM
Dennis Dodd
“The penalties were fair for a school, program, a city and the Penn State community who were wrongly beholden to one man. At the same time [Mark] Emmert was speaking, the NCAA was in the process of rescinding Joe Paterno’s Gerald R. Ford Award given in January 2011. The award is a lifetime achievement honor for exemplary leadership. The NCAA was also busy Monday removing any mention or image of Paterno in its Hall of Champions.
“Penn State will dig out someday, but it won’t be soon. That was the intent.”
TROY CROMWELL
1986 Penn State player
“Now’s a time for us to come together and heal. They’ve got the criminals in jail. Those who’ve passed on have to take that to their graves with them. The rest of us have to stay here and figure out how to heal. I mean, it’s still a great institution, it’s still a great university, and it’s our job to make it better.”
BIG TEN CONFERENCE
“Penn State University is a great institution and has been a valued member of the Big Ten Conference for more than 20 years. Since early November 2011, it has been working very hard to right a terrible wrong. There is more to be done. The intent of the sanctions imposed today is not to destroy a great university, but rather to seek justice and constructively assist a member institution with its efforts to reform.”
Sports, Pages 20 on 07/24/2012