The View From Wisconsin

And the NCAA finally came down with its sanctions against PSU. Let's compare how they lined up with my predictions:

• Two year bowl-game ban. No bowls at all, 2013 and 2014 seasons, Three year post-season game ban. No Big Ten title games, no National Championship playoff games from 2013-2015. The NCAA was harsher - four years, no post-season play, period.
• Three year TV-rights/bowl revenue suspension. All revenues that would normally go to PSU from sources like ESPN, Fox, the Big Ten Network, etc. would go to a fund (run jointly by PSU, the Big Ten and the NCAA) for Child Abuse Prevention. The Big Ten did this, essentially by taking Penn State's TV rights and eliminating it for the next four years - at about $13 million a year. 
• Five year reduction of scholarships by five each year. Oh, BOY was I wrong. PSU's total loss of scholarships for the next four years is 20 per year - 15 per season, instead of 25, and no more than 65 total from 2014-2017, instead of 85. This will hurt Penn State more than anything else, as players who want to come to State College won't be able to. They did, as expected, allow current scholarship players to leave without penalty or discontinue playing football if they wished.
• In 2015, no games at Beaver Stadium. All games scheduled that year will either be played on the road or in a neutral-site venue located outside of the state of Pennsylvania. If a site cannot be secured, the school will forfeit the game. This one was a guess on my part - and it really wouldn't have made any sense to do so. The penalties already imposed were draconian in nature.
• After the first three year suspension of revenues from bowl games, PSU would take half of any other such revenues and place it in the said fund for the next five years. From that point onward, the school would make a minimum of a $1 million donation to the PSU CAP fund for the next sixty years - or until the last victim of Mr. Sandusky passes away, whichever is the longer. They didn't do this, but the $60 million fine essentially made the concept of an endowment program for child abuse prevention. 
• Removal of the Paterno statue from outside of the stadium. Penn State did this before the sanctions were handed out. Where the NCAA took it one step further was to have PSU vacate its wins in football between 1998-2011 - essentially dropping Paterno out of the ranks of the top coaches in terms of wins. 

The only thing about the sanctions that I didn't foresee was the vacating of wins, but that was about all they could do to address Paterno's now-tarnished legacy. I also suspected, but didn't mention, that PSU would go on probation for the next several years (five is what was announced).

Do I agree with all this? I think the NCAA essentially went as far as they could go without giving Penn State the so-called "Death Penalty". And, I also think they realized that no matter what they were going to do, there would be complaints that it did nothing to help those who'd been victimized by Sandusky. 

Either way, it was probably the best thing the university was going to get from the NCAA.