Penn State and Kentucky’s Shame

I’d like to offer some thoughts on the Penn State sanctions and some of the reaction.

When I saw the Sports Illustrated cover, the first thing that came to my mind was the cover for Kentucky’s Shame on the issue that hit newsstands on May 29, 1989.  While the sanctions that hit Kentucky Basketball were serious, nothing comes close to to the Penn State cover up of child abuse and their failure to take any leadership action on the matter.

The Kentucky Men’s Basketball program was one that could have received the death penalty in 1989 but because of actions taken by the university president David Roselle to fire then-coach Eddie Sutton.  The sanctions placed on Kentucky included:

1) prohibit the school from postseason play for the next two years;

2) bar its games from live TV during the 1989-90 season;

3) restrict the program to one more scholarship for next season—two have already been committed, to beings who obviously have been living on Mars—and three more for 1990-91 (Kentucky normally would have been allowed to grant six basketball scholarships for next season);

4) order the school to return its share of receipts from the 1988 NCAA tournament, among other severe financial penalties, and strike its two victories in the tournament from the record for deliberately using an ineligible player, forward Eric Manuel of Macon, Ga., who was then a freshman.

The financial penalties levied against UK totaled about $2,338,017.  Of course, these penalties do not even come close to what Penn State will be paying in the long run.