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Message: [QUOTE="Cusefan95, post: 4982630, member: 173"] The process the NCAA used not only guaranteed that Penn State wouldn’t get the death penalty - it guaranteed they would end up rolling back the penalties they did initially implement. The problem was that the NCAA (probably) caved to their PR people over the objections of their lawyers and went with an expedited process. When Emmert was asked after the NCAA reduced the penalties on Penn State if it was hard to imagine circumventing its normal investigative process and the Committee on Infractions again, he said "Yes. And that was recognized at the time by the Executive Committee and the board that because of the extraordinary circumstances, the process was conducted outside of the normal Committee on Infractions process and again it was seen as something that was distinctive and unique." In that press conference, he said the penalty reductions were because of how cooperative Penn State had been. In reality, several lawsuits had been filed which were dropped after the reductions in penalties - it looks an awful lot like the NCAA reduced penalties to get lawsuits to go away. That’s likely because the “unique process” they’d used put them in an extremely bad position in those lawsuits, and they finally listened to their lawyers who said “I told you” and “”we need to settle”. If the NCAA had imposed a death penalty, it might have killed Penn State football for a couple years - but it likely would have killed the NCAA forever. Every organization which had business contracts with Penn State for football would have sued the NCAA for tortious interference - considering how quickly the NCAA rolled over, its a good assumption they would have had a poor chance of winning. Additionally, reducing penalties after a lost season would have done nothing in these hypothetical cases since the damage was already done — these likely would have proceeded, the NCAA would have lost and become unviable. The only way a death penalty might have stuck is if the NCAA stuck to their normal process (which can take years, as we know). But the public outcry caused them to feel they needed to do something immediately. In the end, all the people who were screaming for the NCAA to give Penn State the death penalty and that they needed to do it IMMEDIATELY - and there were many of those people nationally and on this board - put so much pressure on the NCAA that they made a terrible decision to cave to the mob and implement penalties that had no chance of surviving long term due to their rushed process. It’s part of what I find hilarious, tragic, and frustrating about this - many of the folks on this board who are still upset at how this whole situation played out are the same ones that were part of the national mob creating pressure on the NCAA. That pressure led to the NCAA’s bad decision to use a flawed process, and guaranteed the unsatisfactory result we got. [/QUOTE]

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