The Cowards of Centre County

(with due credit to Kenny Rogers for the original)

Nobody knew he was the coward of Centre County
He'd never had to stand for what he knew was right.
His mama named him Rodney, but no one knew he was yellow,
When the time came for him to stand, he didn't dare to fight.

In November 2011, the Trustees gave Rodney the Lion
The time soon came for him to prove himself a man.
One day while he was working, Mark Emmert he came calling
He came to screw the Lion, n'there was only one of him.

Rodney opened up the door, and saw the battered Lion.
His guts turned to water, and he did not dare advance.
The tears poured down his cheeks while his body shook
His teeth chattered, he felt right sick and found he'd wet his pants.

"What ya gonna do, boy?" Mark Emmert he did challenge
"Ya ain't gonna do nothing, you stupid worthless clown."
"Now I need some help with this 'cause your alumni want a tussle,"
So Rodney walked over and helped Mark hold the Lion down.

"We need to move on," Karen Peetz she then insisted,
While Ken Frazier said "Let's choose the easy over the right"
"Just let the matter drop" Keith Masser then demanded
Said Keith Eckel, "I'd rather cringe than stand and fight"

Then Paul Suhey he came a-crawling
He said "Rodney, better let him have it all."
When Rodney left Old Main, Paterno's statue wasn't standing.
He said, "I've saved my own sorry ass" while Penn State took the fall.

Then the NCAA boys laughed when Wick Sollers walked into the courtroom;
One of them got up and met him half way cross the floor.
When Wick turned around they said, "Another coward's leaving,"
But you could've heard a pin drop when Sollers stopped and locked the door…

NCAA: Time to Settle with Paterno and Corman

Sent 10/6/14

To: NCAA Executive Committee, Division I

cc: PSU alumni networking

Unlike Penn State Trustees Karen Peetz and Kenneth Frazier when they affirmed the Freeh Report’s findings on Penn State’s behalf without authorization by a vote from the Board of Trustees, I need to say up front that I am speaking as an individual, with NO authority to negotiate on behalf of anybody involved in the two current lawsuits against the NCAA. I am also not an attorney, and cannot give anybody legal advice. Having said that, here is the NCAA’s current situation.  If the Paterno family and Senator Corman have to press their lawsuits home, the NCAA could easily be hit with scathing court decisions that reflect on its fitness to regulate college athletics or serve as a role model for college athletes. Nobody has any use for a bully who misuses his authority, or a capricious and arbitrary referee who makes up rules rather than going by the book.

(1)   The Commonwealth’s courts have taken a very dim official view of the sanctions in question, and Judge Anne Covey just said that the NCAA and Penn State were trying to usurp her court’s authority by continuing to agree to the sanctions.

·         The Commonwealth Court’s opinion of 4/09/2014 (409, as in the number of Coach Paterno’s victories) hinted not only that the sanctions were illegitimate, but also that the Trustees whom Mark Emmert says are supportive of the sanctions were derelict in their fiduciary duty for not challenging them. Allies like that are weaknesses, and not assets.

·         State Senator Yudichak added that their recent (August 2014) support of the sanctions proved that personal agendas, and not a Penn State agenda, are driving the Board’s actions.

(2)   The NCAA based its sanctions on “Penn State’s” acceptance of the Freeh Report’s findings that Penn State administrators and Coach Paterno covered up for Jerry Sandusky.

·         Penn State never accepted the Freeh Report’s findings, as proven by the absence of any vote in the July 2012 Board meeting along with statements from Trustees Joel Myers and Anthony Lubrano. The NCAA knew or should have known that Peetz and Frazier had no authority to speak for the University.

(3)   The NCAA’s own recently published guidelines on sexual violence and harassment prove that Coach Paterno did what he was supposed to do, and would have violated the NCAA’s rules by “doing more.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is known as tripping over one’s own feet.

(4)   NCAA head Mark Emmert and former Penn State President Rodney Erickson say the NCAA threatened Penn State with the death penalty. NCAA official Ed Ray says the death penalty was never on the table, and Ameen Najjar went even further by saying Erickson sold Penn State down the river.

(5)   Louis Freeh is becoming more problematic on a daily basis.

·         Freeh just stepped down as head of his law firm, and now his investigative work regarding the BP oil spill is being questioned officially.

·         Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff accused him of acting as a hired gun (unprofessional conduct) in his investigative report for Wynn Resorts.

·         A European court for sports regulation found his work for FIFA to be substandard.

·         His work for Penn State is riddled with contradictory and dishonest statements.

(6)   E-mails obtained per a Freedom of Information request show that Kenneth Frazier, one of the leading Trustees who supports the Consent Decree, sent Freeh a link to an ESPN story very hostile to Coach Paterno and Penn State’s “football culture” while Freeh’s purportedly confidential and independent investigation was still in progress.

The NCAA needs to realize that, if it hasn’t yet figured it out, that it is in this position because of Penn State’s Trustees, and I mean in particular those whom the NCAA says support the sanctions. Those Trustees will drag the NCAA’s credibility down with their own if this controversy continues much longer. I think the NCAA needs to talk to the plaintiffs and their attorneys about a face-saving way to revoke all the sanctions while the NCAA can still maintain the dignified outward appearance of having some control over the outcome, and let the Trustees who are still scrambling to cover up their mismanagement of the Sandusky scandal fend for themselves.

Paterno Family: Magdeburgize the NCAA

Noting that the NCAA's own regulations say openly that Paterno did the right thing in 2001,

Sent on 09/09/2014:

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 17^th 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.

 

Rat Baiting at Penn State: Taking Out the Trash

The NCAA Lawsuit: Penn State's Root Canal

For organizations like Upward State, aka UpYours State, that are willfully distorting the role of the lawsuit against the NCAA, and the need to add Penn State as a nominal defendant.