Penn State Sanctions: $60M, bowl ban and Wins Vacated

The NCAA has hit Penn State with a $60 million sanction, a four-year football postseason ban and a vacation of all wins dating to 1998, the organization said Monday morning.

The career record of Joe Paterno will reflect these vacated records, the NCAA said.

Penn State must also reduce 10 initial and 20 total scholarships each year for a four-year period.
The NCAA revealed the sanctions as NCAA president Mark Emmert and Ed Ray, the chairman of the NCAA's executive committee and Oregon State's president, spoke at a news conference in Indianapolis at the organization's headquarters.

"In the Penn State case, the results were perverse and unconscionable," Emmert said.
"No price the NCAA can levy with repair the damage inflicted by Jerry Sandusky on his victims," he said, referring to the former Penn State defensive coordinator convicted of 45 counts of child sex abuse last month.

The NCAA said the $60 million was equivalent to the average annual revenue of the football program. The NCAA ordered Penn State to pay the penalty funds into an endowment for "external programs preventing child sexual abuse or assisting victims and may not be used to fund such programs at the university."

With the wins from 1998-2011 vacated, Paterno drops from 409 wins to 298, dropping him from first to 12th on the winningest NCAA football coach list. Penn State will also have six bowl wins and two conference championships erased.

The Penn State athletic program will also be put on five-year probation and must work with an athletic-integrity monitor of NCAA's chosing.

"There is incredible interest in what will happen to Penn State football," Ray said at the news conference. "But the fundamental chapter of this horrific story should focus on the innocent children and and the powerful people who let them down."

The NCAA's announcement followed a day after Penn State removed Joe Paterno's statue outside Beaver Stadium, a decision that came 10 days after a scathing report by former FBI director Louis J. Freeh found that Paterno, with three other top Penn State administrators, had concealed allegations of child sexual abuse made against Sandusky.

The Freeh report concluded their motive was to shield the university and its football program from negative publicity.

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