Monday, July 23, 2012

Weird ...

... Sanctions drop Paterno to 12th on winningest coach list - The Daily Item, Sunbury, PA.


I have no dog in this fight, but it does strike me as being a bit like how they dug up Cromwell after his death and hanged his corpse. These teams either won those games or they didn't. And if they won them, doesn't taking the wins away punish perfectly innocent players? 

3 comments:

  1. I would prefer to believe that the players know what they did and that it doesn't matter if the games were "taken away." It does not hurt their future, and people will understand why.

    What this does do is drop Paterno's name down a list he thought was very important, and in the future, when his name will be discussed, the reason why it was dropped with either be mentioned, or recalled from memory.

    This is important. And necessary. The principle that is greater than records is that covering up illegal behavior will result in far greater punishment than the original infraction.

    It should only be applied in far more areas than this, but it's a good place to start.

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  2. I agree with Bill. An institution is separate from the people in the institution. Any individual who has been "punished" by whatever is done is not suffering in any way comparable to what those child victims suffered.

    I think the major flaw in what was done was not to establish a hotline for reporting harmful behavior. We need a system where janitors and assistants need not fear losing their jobs.

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  3. I agree with Frank. The athletes are suffering for the transgressions of the coaching staff. The athletes won in spite of the coaches. That makes their feats evermore noteworthy.

    This is different, by the way, than the Red Sox, Yankees et al, cheating at baseball---the players doing the cheating. MLB needs to be watching the NCAA and start taking the championships away from the cheaters, retrocatively. These drugged players not only cheated other teams out of their championships, but took up spots on teams that non-cheating athletes could not rightfully earn. Manny Ramirez, for instance, kept right on cheating after he was suspected and traded twice, but kept right on raking in the millions until he was finally cornered. Only then did he walk away from pro baseball. He took an honest athlete's spot on three different MLB teams. We don't know who those outfielders were who would have been played instead, and should have played and might be stars today. They were at home watching the games when they weren't working overtime at regular jobs.

    The MLB must consider what the NCAA has considered. And the NCAA needs to reconsider.

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