The NCAA has banned Penn State’s football team from postseason play for the next four years, slashed the number of football scholarships and vacated more than a decade of the team’s wins as sanctions for a lack of oversight that led to the child sex abuse scandal involving former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.
The university also must pay a $60 million fine — the equivalent of one year of profits for the university’s football team. The college sports governing body would use the money to endow programs to combat child sex abuse.
The sanctions “should serve as a wake-up call to everyone involved in college sports” about their responsibility to promote moral behavior, said NCAA committee chairman Ed Ray said.
Under an agreement with university officials, the NCAA also will vacate all of former coach Joe Paterno’s victories from 1998-2011. Though the NCAA stopped short of imposing the “death penalty” — shutting down the Nittany Lions’ program completely — the punishment is still crippling for a team that is trying to start over with a new coach and a new outlook.
The NCAA sanctions will have an effect on Wisconsin’s football program, reducing the competition for the 2012 Leaders Division title and a berth in the Big Ten title game to three teams with UW facing Purdue, Illinois and Indiana.
The sanctions come 11 days after a report by former FBI director Louis Freeh about a lack of oversight by legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno and the rest of the Penn State leadership.
The investigation focused partly on university officials’ decision not to go to child-welfare authorities in 2001 after a coaching assistant told Paterno that he had seen Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in the locker room showers. Penn State officials already knew about a previous allegation against Sandusky by that time, from 1998.
The leaders, the report said, “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from authorities, the university’s board of trustees, the Penn State community and the public at large.”
Sandusky is awaiting sentencing after being convicted last month of sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
