Penn State University loses 1998-2011 football victories, fined $60 million by NCAA in Jerry Sandusky scandal

The university will lose scholarships and can't play in the postseason for four years. Vote in the NEWS POLL.

Penn State University's football team has been banned for four years from postseason play and the university has been stripped of all football victories since 1998, the NCAA announced this morning during a news conference in Indianapolis.

Penn State will be fined $60 million, the amount of gross revenue from one football season, and has a four-year scholarship reduction, NCAA President Mark Emmert announced this morning in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. The money is to go to supporting children's issues, he said.

Sandusky is a former Penn State assistant football coach who was convicted recently of sexually assaulting several boys during a span of 15 years.

Current players can transfer to another NCAA institution without penalty, Emmert said. The NCAA stopped short of the "death penalty," which would have shut down the football program for at least a year.

"Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people," Emmert said.

The Big Ten Conference added its own sanctions, banning Penn State from the conference's championship game and making the school ineligible for its share of league bowl revenue for four years.

Wins taken away

Coach Joe Paterno, whose statue was removed Sunday from its perch outside Beaver State in University Park, Pa., will no longer be Division I's all-time leader in football victories. The Freeh Report, which investigated the university's response to learning Sandusky had sexually abused young boys, indicated Paterno caused the university not to tell outside authorities about a 2001 Sandusky assault witnessed in a university shower.

Emmert had earlier said he had "never seen anything as egregious" as the horrific crimes of Sandusky and the coverup by Paterno and others at the university, including former Penn State President Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim Curley.

The university or individual coaches could face further sanctions as the legal process plays out, Emmert said. Penn State has signed off on the NCAA sanctions, according to The Patriot-News of Harrisburg.

By vacating 112 Penn State victories from 1998-2011, the sanctions cost Paterno 111 wins. Former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden will now hold the top spot in the NCAA record book with 377 major-college wins. Paterno, who was fired days after Sandusky was charged, will be credited with 298 wins.

The scholarship reductions mean Penn State’s roster will be capped at 65 scholarship players beginning in 2014. The normal scholarship limit for major college football programs is 85. Playing with 20 less is devastating to a program that tries to compete at the highest level of the sport.

In comparison, the harsh NCAA sanctions placed upon USC several years ago left the Trojans with only 75 scholarships per year over a three-year period.

The postseason ban is the longest handed out by the NCAA since it gave a four-year ban to Indiana football in 1960.

'It's earth shattering'

"It's really sort of mixed," Bob Ehrlich, a onetime Liberty High School soccer star who had a solid career at Penn State in the late 1970s, said about his reaction to the NCAA sanctions. "I don't think they were that severe; $60 million to a program like that doesn't make that much of difference. It's not that severe in context of getting the 'death penalty.' They are going to be hurting for a while. But other people have come back from that."

When Ehrlich was a freshman in 1975 at Penn State, Paterno read the soccer team the NCAA regulations. "He said, 'if it smells wrong, don't do it.'"

"It's really a tremendously sad situation," Ehrlich said. "It's almost like finding out there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. You felt (as a Penn State athlete) like something that was way bigger than you and made you a better person for being there. To find out that's not true, it's earth shattering. I always felt good about being a Penn State athlete. It's a hard thing to get your hands around."

He said the school became answerable to no one. But that's changing.

"In some ways (the new school leadership) grabbed the bull by the horns," he said, adding that the entire board of trustees should resign.

But the scandal doesn't change his fondness of his alma mater.

"I don't think anything can diminish that experience; 40,000 people get their (education there each year) and less than a handful were involved," he said.

At a student union on campus, several dozen alumni and students gasped, groaned and whistled as they watched Emmert’s news conference.

“It was kind of just like a head shaker,” said Matt Bray, an 18-year-old freshman from West Chester, Pa. “You knew it was coming, but it was hard to hear.”