So what's next for Penn State? In the wake of the Freeh Report's release this week, that's the question many commentators and members of the public have asked. According to Associated Press sports columnist Tim Dahlberg, the answer is simple: "gut the football program."
"NCAA - here's a suggestion for punishment: Give Penn State a year's probation and bowl ban for every year Sandusky ran amok at State College since 1998, until he was arrested last year," Dahlberg writes. "That's a staggering 13 years, a penalty that would gut the football program much as Sandusky gutted the lives of those young boys."
But how the NCAA would going about doing so, remains nuanced and complicated. From Tim Rohan of the New York Times:
The crimes Sandusky was convicted of - sexually attacking 10 young boys over a number of years, some of them in campus athletic facilities - are also far beyond anything the N.C.A.A. has ever become involved with from the standpoint of punishment. Still, those crimes are considered so heinous that there is a widespread view that the N.C.A.A. must do something.
"There are really no bylaws that cover this," said David Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University. "The N.C.A.A. is notorious for applying things arbitrarily and inconsistently, and it would not be beyond imagination for them to conjure something up within the current bylaws."
Only one college football program has ever received the infamous "death penalty," SMU in 1987.
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