NCAA Damaged Penn State’s Reputation: ‘They Owe Us’

As I have repeatedly stated from the moment it was announced, what the NCAA did to Penn State was unjustified, unfair, coercive, and may have been illegal.

The recently passed Penn State Board of Trustees resolution reiterated that the board never accepted the Consent Decree nor did it adopt the Freeh report.

The board did in fact consider each recommendation contained in the Freeh Report and adopted most of them, many of which originated from members of the faculty and the board and were simply adopted by Freeh in his report.

Given the overall situation that we faced, I and others on the Board, worked to educate the press about the true positive Penn State culture and worked hard to reduce the sanctions while supporting the president and the administration in following the consent decree. If we wanted to get out of the unfair sanctions and highly burdensome sanctions I believed there was no other choice. This strategy has been successful.

Working with Senator George Mitchell, and setting Penn State up as a leader – an academic model of moral and ethical standards and institutional control of intercollegiate athletics – many of the sanctions have now been lifted and Penn State is on the high road following a terrible ordeal that could have brought a lesser institution down.

Our new structure has served as a model for other institutions to follow. As Mark Emmert stated this week, Penn State is an “exemplary program”. What has always been true about Penn State is it maintained high admission standards for all student athletes who took real courses and had to earn real grades. And, Penn State was among only three universities to have never been sanctioned.

However, because the NCAA and Freeh capitalized on a tragic situation to unnecessarily damage Penn State’s reputation, they owe us.

All reasonable people should ask the NCAA why it has not required all other educational institutions to establish the same processes, procedures, structure and ethical standards that Penn State has now put in place? Why are many institutions, the very ones that make up the NCAA, allowed to operate at potentially lesser ethical levels?

Since the NCAA has discriminated against Penn State and damaged the reputation of our student athletes, who created one of the best combined records of academic/educational achievement and victories in college football, and damaged a football program forced to field teams with a serious depth deficiency, now is the time to play fair:

• 1) The wins earned by student athletes who had nothing to do with any of the allegations contained in the Freeh report and were improperly taken by the NCAA should be restored
• 2) The monetary penalty should be removed and all of our money taken from innocent students be returned

And frankly, I’d add a third thing, however, I am realistic enough to realize it will not happen:

• 3) Mark Emmert needs to stand up and apologize.

But fair-minded people should expect the sanctions to be completely dissolved and the money repatriated to Penn State. Let’s hope we hear more from the NCAA.

Joel N. Myers

Penn State Emeritus Trustee