<p>My bet is, Penn State already lost many applicants for whom football was a major factor in choosing a college in a near future. The writing is on the wall. Penn State’s football standing will suffer even if nothing like a “sabbatical” is done. Top prospective recruits will go elsewhere. Disruption in the leadership will have an impact, etc. </p>
<p>So, many high school students for whom cheering for the winning team with is a critical part of the college experience will look else.</p>
<p>As such, putting football on a sabbatical for a few months will have no impact on its ability to recruit football crazed high school kids (they aren’t coming anyway), and it may jump start the process of refurbishing tarnished school reputation by demonstrating very clearly to the outside world that Penn State is not an institution that exist to serve the needs of its football program. </p>
<p>When budget is an issue, academic programs are cut resulting in “inconvenience” for many students and other stakeholders. Nobody shows such angst for that. Now, we are talking about putting the football program on hold for a few months, and people are agonizing over it, and repeating stories of inconvenienced cheerleaders and band players? This just shows how in Penn State everything else is a hostage to football. Amazing…</p>
<p>Your sarcasm is not useful and your information is flawed. I assume you are neither a PSU alum, parent of a PSU student, Centre region resident, PSU employee, or PA resident. Because if you were, you would know --having paid attention — that the past fiscal year resulted in demonstrations, meetings, and countless local media articles as the state government drastically cut funding for PSU and the resultant battle to restore it was waged. The athletic department (which is funded almost entirely by football revenues) was untouched and not an issue at all. Instead, the jobs/programs/cuts were in the College of Liberal arts, ag science, and cooperative extension (the guys you go to in every PA county to find out what’s wrong with your crops, or wrong with your yard). There was plenty of angst, as you so kindly put it, for those things. If you don’t live here, you wouldn’t know that, but the PSU community certainly did. </p>
<p>As you know perfectly well, the “band members and cheerleaders” wording people have been using in this thread is simply a single example, a “f’ instance” to argue that many, many more people than simply athletes on the field would be punished by cancelling a season. Those of us on the “not a constructive choice” side of that fence get your point, we do. We just don’t agree. You can keep posting it over and over, but we just don’t happen to agree that it’s going to help anything related to child abuse. The season is over tomorrow, and I expect that during the off season every coach and assistant coach will leave the program as the house cleaning begins.</p>
<p>Greenbutton - very well said. Totally agree with you. I think we just have to ignore the posters that just keep repeating over and over what they think should be done. I am hearing on a daily basis, people who are applying to Penn State for their number one choice so it doesn’t sound like applicants are decreasing. My son is a freshman there and absolutely loves it and I am proud to say that he is a Penn State student!!!</p>
<p>As an outsider, I just want to add that the damage to Penn State’s image will not come from the abuse scandal. It won’t even come from the cover up on the part of Paterno, Curley and Spanier. It will come from the overall reaction of a large–if not majority–component of the Penn State community: the students rioting in support of Paterno, the BOT’s attempt to put one of their own in charge of the investigation and pack it with (in their words), “mostly, if not wholly, with Penn State alumni” the numerous signs at the Nebraska game in support of Paterno and I could go on and on.</p>
<p>Here is a quote taken from a Penn State message board, and it is fully indicative of the overwhelming viewpoint found there:</p>
<p>{I felt a compromise could have been worked out where we cheered our beloved head coach one final time to say goodbye. The BOT took this away from us. I will never forget this Holocaust of a very different kind. The complete distruction of Penn State football and everything I have believed in for over 40 years. I guess cheering for Joe was cheering our approval for child abuse. What total and absolute BS. I have nothing but hatred for the gutless BOT and there 10 PM announcement that led to the riots. That God no one was killed. The blood would have been on their hands.}</p>
<p>The entire nation has been utterly horrified at what happened at Penn State. For a very large and very visible component of the Penn State community to attempt to whitewash this, blame the “media” and make Joe Paterno the victim is to send a message to the rest of the country of where their priorities truly lie. A message that may not resound terribly well with prospective students and their parents.</p>
<p>dalm65 - That’s great…and I hope your son has wonderful years at Penn State. I have very fond memories of my years in Happy Valley almost 30 years ago. If he isn’t already involved he may want to become a part of Thon…the world’s largest student run philanthropy…FTK…For the Kids. The proceeds benefit kids with pediatric cancer. The child abuse is horrifically sad and the silence by the adults was inexcusable. That said, however, the students did not cause it and I hope that his experience at Penn State will prepare him for his future and provide him with the education he needs to be a successful, and good person in life.</p>
<p>A very large community attempted to whitewash this? What? </p>
<p>I don’t know what you are reading, Lenny, but the rest of us read that Spanier, Shultz, Curley, Paterno and McQueary are the individuals that did not report Sandusky’s actions to the police outside of the campus police. Five men do not make a very large community at a college with 92,000 students. Perhaps you missed the news that the Penn State faculty pushed for an outside investigation, the students held a candlelight vigil with 10,000 in attendance, and over $600,000 has been collected in the past two weeks by Penn State students and alums to help prevent child abuse.</p>
<p>The statement you posted WITHOUT A SOURCE SO WE COULD READ IT was likely posted by you or a hater pretending to be a Penn State student or alumni.</p>
<p>The damage to Penn State won’t be due to public anger, nor fear that “my child could be abused.” The damage will be the result of game theory.</p>
<p>Highly qualified applicants will choose other schools specifically because they fear that other highly qualified applicants will choose other schools. It’s a bit like the stock market. Once panic sets in, people start selling simply because they fear that others will sell, even though it would be in everyone’s best interest to stop panic selling. </p>
<p>Because of this unfortunate mentality, the school will not be able to be as selective as it has been in recent years and it will lose prestige. I’m not saying that this is right or fair, but you are honest, you know that this is what it will come down to. I’m sure that Penn State will recover, but it will take years.</p>
<p>I can’t see why a really strong student would consider applying to Penn State right now.<br>
[ul]
[<em>] The repercussions of this scandal will actively play out for the entire four years, effectively eliminating the normal college experience of a healthy university environment.
[</em>] The pricing is ridiculous (the nation’s most expensive flagship); you can get the same quality elsewhere for a better price, even if in-state.
[<em>] Merit aid is trivial (a few thousand dollars at Schreyer’s).
[</em>] New PSU grads will find themselves repeatedly engaged in this unpleasant conversation for decades; it will become very old.
[li] Any future improvement will depend on PSU leadership doing the right thing, and they’re not off to a a good start.[/li][/ul]</p>
<p>Who wants to pay top dollar for somebody’s old smelly baggage?</p>
<p>This is going to take time - a lot of time. Retaining a football program will be the easy part. Attracting decent students will be really hard.</p>
<p>Actually there may be some actions that Penn State could do to hurry the process. Refusing to go to a bowl game or suspending Div I football for the next year may show that they are serious about changing the culture that led to the scandal.</p>
<p>They seem to be missing the boat in the areas of transparency and openness. To me, that indicates that their mindset is still all wrong; they need outsiders and sunlight, and fast. I foresee a long and painful process; early signs don’t look good.</p>
<p>Yes, I would take that as an indication that they get it, which is the first essential step on the very long road toward getting past this. So far, I’m not seeing much evidence that they DO get it. They seem mostly to be about defending the program and defending their legal position.</p>
<p>judging from the tone of the discussion here and the fact that they went ahead with the Nebraska game, what some outsiders like you and myself have been suggesting will fall on deaf ears. Too bad. From the crisis management point of view, there is no other response from Penn State that can jump start the rehabilitation process better than this, after the scandal itself and the PR fiasco of the “one more game” riot.</p>
<p>(those of you who keep saying the rioters were just a minority number of students, watch Jon Stewart on this. Regardless of how fair or not, it is how the whole episode was portrayed to the rest of the public, and Penn State needs a very effective and forceful response to counter it. Yes, it’s unfair to the rest of the students who are the majority. But perception is reality. Keep saying it’s unfair and fail to take action. Ask 99.99 % of law abiding, moderate muslims how this “it’s unfair” protest is working for them. Every terror attack that is not swiftly condemned by the majority muslim citizens strengthens the unfair public prejudice against them on a whole sale basis.)</p>
<p>For the people suggesting that they don’t play football next year, that is stupid and never will happen. And shouldn’t happen. You obviously aren’t thinking through how many people are involved with football. How about the players who are on scholarships who won’t be able to play, then won’t be able to attend school that year. The many people employed at the stadium, and even in other places, that will be out of a job. The lost revenue that will force the university to cut corners and/or raise tuition again. This doesn’t show they’re sorry, it shows that they are mindless scaredy cats. This was not the result of the entire football program. It was the result of a few men.</p>
<p>It was the result of an entire community putting football above all else. Lots of people in the community are still doing that. </p>
<p>As for the players, in the past when the NCAA has administered the so-called “death penalty” – shutting down the program for one or more seasons – the players who weren’t involved in the infractions were allowed to transfer to other schools without loss of eligibility. Penn State should still pay their scholarships.</p>
<p>I still think that eliminating football for a year is an absolutely arbitrary act of contrition from people who were not the source of the conflict.</p>
<p>kpattz: The football program was the center of this entire scandal. Right now you have state, federal and NCAA investigations into your football program. It is up to PSU to decide if they are serious about addressing the root cause of the scandal. And that is the football program.</p>
<p>kpattz, many many people in the Penn State family still don’t seem to understand that this is WAY bigger than football. A horrible, horrible thing happened over many years. That could never have happened if it hadn’t been for the school’s devotion to football. The program is seen by players, students, alums, and community as being important than telling the truth, more important than saving children, more important than actually living out the values Paterno talked about so many times. The reaction of the students the night JoePa was fired shows that to them, the abused children were less important than the football coach. Many people in the PSU community don’t feel that way, but many still do. Saying that football must, ABOVE ALL, be saved is proof that it should be shut down.</p>