From the most interesting legal blog. David Post raises new questions about the NCAA’s fine of Penn State:
So the NCAA has now imposed sanctions on the Penn State athletic program for its many failures, including a $60 million fine and various other restrctions on their athletic program (designed, as the NCAA itself proudly notes, to be “punitive”). From the NCAA announcement:
“The NCAA imposes a $60 million fine, equivalent to the approximate average of one year’s gross revenues from the Penn State football program, to be paid over a five-year period beginning in 2012 into an endowment for programs preventing child sexual abuse and/or assisting the victims of child sexual abuse. The minimum annual payment will be $12 million until the $60 million is paid. The proceeds of this fine may not be used to fund programs at the University. No current sponsored athletic team may be reduced or eliminated in order to fund this fine.”
So let me get this straight: The NCAA is ordering the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, because of the misdeeds of their agents, to set up an endowment program for preventing child sexual abuse and fund it to the tune of sixty million dollars?? And oh, by the way, taxpayers of Pennsylvania: you can take it out of lab space, computers, and teaching salaries, but YOU MAY NOT PAY THIS FINE BY REDUCING CURRENT SPENDING ON ATHLETICS! …
Post still doesn’t have it straight.
Penn State said on Monday they would NOT use taxpayer money to pay the fine but that it would come out of “athletic reserves”.
And then he twists the capitalized phrasing to imply that the NCAA is telling Penn State sports to continue some level of athletic spending in general. Weak. What they said was they couldn’t, in effect, raid or eliminate other sports programs, which includes scholarships, to pay their fines.
People want to use this episode and ruling to swing for the fence to try to undo the NCAA and big time college sports. If that’s going to happen, it will take time and concerted effort by university administrators and faculty across the nation. This really isn’t the best article to use to defend the idea that college sports spending is out of control.