Pennsylvania state senator John Yudichak is urging Penn State officials to consider an amendment to the consent decree to reduce harsh sanctions imposed by the NCAA. The consent decree, accepting sanctions against the university, was signed by Penn State President Rodney Erickson and NCAA President Mark Emmert in July. Yudichak is a Penn State graduate. He met with the state Secretary of Education and Penn State trustee Ronald Tomalis at yesterday’s Senate Appropriations Committee budget hearing. That included a discussion about Penn State’s handling of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
According to Sen. Yudichak, “We’ve heard from the governor and many others that the Freeh report is incomplete at best, and at worst, fundamentally flawed. The Freeh report has cost the university in excess of $80 million to date and by some estimates that total will exceed $150 million – an extraordinary amount of money for an incomplete report that lacked subpoena power and had no access to key witnesses.
“It has been reported that the NCAA did not identify a single rule that Penn State violated, and instead, accepted the Freeh report as the conclusive document on the Sandusky scandal. The NCAA’s ill-conceived acceptance and use of the report’s vague conclusions to base the incredibly harsh sanctions on was unfair and should be challenged by the Board of Trustees.”
“I believe that it is the responsibility of Penn State University and the Board of Trustees to immediately address the serious shortcomings of the Freeh report and to seek an amendment to the consent decree with the NCAA to remove or reduce all sanctions against Penn State University,” Yudichak said in a news release.
Penn State officials said the university has no comment.
Penn State agreed to sanctions the NCAA called ‘unprecedented,’ which include a four-year postseason ban and a significant loss of scholarships for the football team, wins under former head coach Joe Paterno between 1998-2011 were vacated a $60 million fine was imposed on the university, which will be paid into an endowment fund set up for programs that support victims of child abuse.
In January, Gov. Tom Corbett filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA in January in an effort to reverse the sanctions. He also said he believes the NCAA violated its own bylaws when it signed the consent agreement with Penn State.
