To:
Penn State Trustees, President Barron
cc:
Senators Yudichak, Dinniman, Corman, Wick Sollers (Paterno family attorney),
alumni networking
This
policy publication (http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/Sexual-Violence-Prevention.pdf)
shows unequivocally that:
·
The
NCAA was dishonest when it imposed its sanctions on Penn State, and perhaps to
the extent that it is not fit to regulate college athletics.
o
I
cannot give legal advice, but I think the NCAA dug its own grave when it
released "Addressing Sexual Assault and Interpersonal Violence." I
encourage Senator Corman and the Paterno family to press their lawsuits à
outrance to compel the NCAA to return Penn State’s money, Coach Paterno’s
victories, and also compensatory and maybe punitive damages—punitive being
appropriate for willful dishonesty as opposed to a mere mistake—for lost bowl
game revenue and harm to Penn State’s reputation.
o
Add
to this evidence the fact that either Rodney Erickson and Mark Emmert, or else
NCAA officials Ed Ray and Ameen Najjar, lied about the death penalty threat.*
Another alternative is, of course, that other NCAA members lied to Ray and
Najjar about the death penalty never being on the table, but the bottom line is
that we have two stories whose veracity is mutually exclusive. A court of law
will probably take a very dim view of a situation involving $60 million in
which somebody has told a falsehood.
o
The
NCAA also is on record as lying about Penn State’s acceptance of the Freeh
Report’s findings, when it knows fully well that the Trustees never studied,
let alone voted to approve, these findings.
·
The
11/9/2011 Board of Trustees was incompetent, and failed to exercise basic
diligence, when it fired Coach Paterno (and probably President Spanier, but the
NCAA document proves this unequivocally only with respect to Paterno).
·
Kenneth
Frazier and Karen Peetz exhibited defective judgment when Frazier falsely
accused Paterno of failing to protect children and Peetz said Paterno’s service
had been marred, and also caused enormous harm to Penn State by affirming the
Freeh Report’s findings in violation of the Board’s Standing Orders. The NCAA
used their statements as an excuse to impose the sanctions.
o
This,
President Barron, is why you are short at least three years’ worth of the money
you said would cover unmet student needs.
o
The
Peetz-controlled, and then Masser-controlled, Board was derelict in its
fiduciary duty (the opinion expressed by the Commonwealth Court on April 9,
2014) for failing to challenge the NCAA sanctions. The Masser-controlled board
continued this dereliction with its vote in August to continue to go along with
the sanctions, as described by Senator Yudichak: “Commonwealth Court opinion
questions the validity of the NCAA consent decree, so why are the majority
trustees embracing a flawed, indefensible verdict against Penn State? Further proof personal agendas,
not a Penn State agenda, are driving board decisions.”
·
Louis
Freeh was dishonest when he condemned Paterno for not violating the NCAA rules
shown below.
·
Governor
Corbett was dishonest and/or incompetent when he said Paterno should have done
more. Alumni of both parties will take what Kenneth Frazier called “corrective
action, employment action” with regard to Mr. Corbett this November.
·
Media
personalities like Buzz Bissinger and Dan Bernstein who condemned Paterno
should be writing for the newspapers one sees in supermarket checkout lines, or
else appearing on very late night talk radio with the likes of Jeff Rense.
From
page 4 of "Addressing Sexual Assault and Interpersonal Violence."
“Cooperate with but not manage, direct, control or
interfere with college or university investigations into allegations of
sexual violence ensuring that investigations involving student-athletes and
athletics department staff are managed in the same manner as all other students
and staff on campus.”
Another
alumnus directed me to page 13 (numbered page, it’s the 17th page of
the NCAA document cited below)
LEGAL REQUIREMENTS
Athletics departments are held to the
same federal requirements of all institutional staff and departments when it
comes to education and reporting requirements. Athletics staff members are
required to report any suspected or alleged sexual violence or harassment
immediately to appropriate campus offices for resolution; the athletics department is not
the appropriate staff to adjudicate a reported case of sexual assault.
It
should be quite clear that the NCAA’s recent conciliatory behavior (removal of
a handful of sanctions it never had any right to impose, and giving in to
Senator Corman on the issue of the $60 million remaining in the Commonwealth)
is the behavior of somebody who grabs food from a pack of hungry lions, and
then realizes he cannot run fast enough. Tossing the lions a few scraps of
their own property is not going to buy them off, and I do not think Senator
Corman or the Paterno family should allow the NCAA to buy them off with a few
scraps either.** I think the NCAA is terrified of seeing the inside of a
courtroom, having to testify under oath (e.g. regarding the death penalty
threat), and having to defend the disparity between its own written policies
and its enforcement actions. I and other alumni would enjoy that because it is
quite likely that the NCAA might not survive as an organization, but it might
be better for the NCAA to put this matter behind it by returning Penn State’s
money, Coach Paterno’s victories, compensation for the lost bowl game revenue,
and a public apology for actions it had no right to take (again, that’s the
Commonwealth Court’s view) in the first place.
*
As reported by the Reading Eagle,
Oregon
State president Ed Ray, president of the NCAA's executive committee, has told
at least two publications that the committee never threatened Penn State with a four-year death
penalty.
…Ray,
who stood alongside Emmert at the NCAA press conference July 23 in
Indianapolis, told ESPN later that day that an "overwhelming"
majority of the executive committee, which includes presidents and chancellors
from Divisions I, II and III, and the Division I executive board were against
imposing a death penalty on Penn State football.
**
On Cooling the Mark Out
Some
Aspects of Adaptation to Failure
Erving
Goffman
Sometimes, however, a mark [victim of criminal fraud] is not quite
prepared to accept his loss as a gain in experience and to say and do nothing
about his
venture. He may feel
moved to complain to the police or to chase after the operators. In the terminology
of the trade, the mark may squawk, beef, or come through. From the operators'
point of view, this kind of behaviour is bad for business. It gives the members
of the mob a bad reputation with such police as have not yet been fixed and
with marks who have not yet been taken. In order to avoid this adverse
publicity, an additional phase is sometimes added at the end of the play. It is called cooling the mark
out. After the blowoff has occurred, one of the operators stays with the
mark and makes an effort to keep the anger of the mark within manageable and
sensible proportions. The operator stays behind his team‑mates in the capacity
of what might be called a cooler and exercises upon the mark the art of
consolation. An attempt is made to define the situation for the mark in a way
that makes it easy for him to accept the inevitable and quietly go home. The
mark is given instruction in the philosophy of taking a loss.
There are,
in fact, scammers who think people can be pacified in exactly this manner. I
recall reading about an identity thief who was pursued by her victim, the
latter with a camera-equipped cell phone to call police. The identity thief
screamed at the pursuer, “Why won’t you leave me alone?” or something to that
effect. If the NCAA is under the same delusion, somebody (e.g. Paterno family
and other plaintiffs) needs to come down on it like a ton of bricks to educate
it to the contrary, even if the education proves fatal to the NCAA as an
organization.
Again excellent job!
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