Bull[Mark May], it's a very applicable analogy. Penn State's football program is what enabled Sandusky's decades-long hunt for young boys, and it is what needs to be punished. There is no better way to punish a football program than to reduce its scholarship cap, put it on probation, and/or temporarily or permanently shut it down.
First let's be honest about what is really behind your pov. You don't like Penn St. Neither do I. You are outraged that children were raped. So am I - and so is anyone who has a soul. There was a context this happened in that involves the culture of the football program - and you want to see that culture punished for that context.
We part ways at this point because legal right and wrong has to be defined in very clear terms, and those who were principallly involved in the wrong-doing, or aided them directly and with knowledge, are the ones who must be held accountable. When we move away from punishing only the letter of the law, and begin to intentionally punish those who are merely associated with the principals, we are moving away from objective standards of right and wrong and towards a subjective thing where the wrong-doing is fuzzy and those who were not directly involved become guilty by association - where people are going to end up getting punished because other people do not like them. And while that may serve our individual desire to see, say, Penn State's entire football culture punished, it sets a bad precedent that we will suffer from when the same is applied to us - which it was the last couple of years with the bowl ban and scholarship limitations.
Analogies are the playground of sophistry - and the ways that yours doesn't work are too numerous to deal with. But I will offer one that I think comes closer to the Penn State situation. You are a mid or lower level employee in a mid-sized company. There are executives above you that are involved in fraud. You were never aware of the exact nature of what they were doing, but you heard rumors and maybe had some suspicions. You actually participated in executing the fraud unknowinly, and benefitted from it because you made bonuses based on the profits your employer made from the fraud. The fraud gets exposed and the executives are prosecuted - the principal guilty parties are held accountable. In addition, the company gets sued, has to file banruptcy, and folds - you lose your job. That's life. You suffer because of what others have done.
But that's different than what is being advocated here by some. They want the princpals of the crime prosecuted, plus they want the controllng authority to directly sanction you and all of the mid-lower level employees. There was a culture in the company that the fraud occured in, the employees were part of that culture, and worse, they benefitted from the crime. So, the court is going to give you and your peers a short jail sentence and you are going to be fined for your association with those who committed the fraud - not as severe of a punishment as the principals, but enough to satisfy the desire to punish the culture.
While there are numerous problems with that analogy, that is basically what the NCAA has been doing to schools for decades. Some of the "crimes" in football programs are program or institutional (coaches looking the other way, failure to monitor, etc.) so the NCAA is trying to hold those larger entities accountable, but in the process they level sanctions against people who were not involved in the wrong-doing in any way. How about this? If you are a coach or program staff member and you cheat, you can't work at an NCAA school for 10 years. If you are a compliance staff person and you fail to do your job, you are fired. If you are a player and you break major rules, your collegiate eligibility is over.
But this nonsense that Braxton Milller can't QB his team in a BIG championship game and bowl game because Terrelle Pryor and friends sold their stuff 3 years ago, and that Urban Meyer can't coach in those games because Jim Tressel had a dilemma he solved by employing dishonesty, is just plain nuts. If that rings true to you in the case of Ohio State, then it has to ring true in the case of Penn State - because the exact same thing is happening there. Different circumstances and severity of "crimes", but the effect of the sanctions falling on non-principals is exactly the same.
Don't call me naive. I am probably 1.5-2 times most of you guys' age. I have run a business for 25 years. I have been happily married for 30. I have raised two quality kids to adulthood. I will be a grandfather soon. I have volunteered to help in adult prisons, and I mentor boys through the juvenile court in my county. I have lived and seen a lot of other people live successfully and not. Does that make me infallible? Nope, but it makes the idea that I am naive, well, sophistic.
And that is all I have to say on the matter. If any of you guys want to argue with that or you don't understand, I won't be able to help you.
