A Word in Favor of the (NCAA) Death Penalty

45 days from today the world returns to normal.  College football season begins.   Fortunately the three teams I love to watch (the Arkansas Razorbacks, Michigan Wolverines and Texas Longhorns) are on TV pretty often so it is about guaranteed that I will have at least one game to watch each week.   I love college football and I love that it comes back year after year like an old friend.

It is because I love college football and college athletics in general that I have to join my voice to the growing chorus calling on the NCAA to impose the “death penalty” on Penn State’s football program.  For those who do not know, the NCAA death penalty bans a college or university from fielding a team in a particular sport usually for one or two seasons.  That means no practice, no recruiting, no scholarships, no TV money. 

The death penalty has been handed down only five times in the last six decades and in every instance the issue was one of NCAA rules infractions or, in the case of Kentucky basketball in the 1950s, cheating by point-shaving.  The Penn State case is different because it involves actual criminal behavior and conspiracy to allow that behavior to go unpunished. 

Some have argued that this fact demonstrates that the NCAA should stay out of the mix and allow law enforcement to do their job.  That the NCAA is not competent to act in these matters and that it would serve to punish the players and fans who were not involved in the cover up thus compounding injustice with injustice.

I disagree.

Law enforcement should, and doubtless will, do their job in bringing legal justice to those who are found to have broken the law.  And no matter what happens the fans and student athletes will be caught in the middle.  But the NCAA has a stake in this as well.  College athletics are perceived as being above the law, especially in big sport schools like Penn State.  For that reason alone, the NCAA must step in and shut down the Penn State football program for a period of time. 

But perception is hardly the only reason to penalize the program.  The program has materially benefitted from these actions in preserving their reputation and keeping the status quo.  Given the fallout that has come since Sandusky’s crimes (he was found guilty, they are no longer alleged) were revealed, it is no surprise that the Penn State administration and Athletic Department tried to keep a lid on things.  The program benefitted directly from their conspiracy of silence.  That cannot go unchallenged.

The NCAA should, at a minimum, shut down all football related activities for two seasons, institute a TV and bowl ban through January 2015 and halve scholarships through the 2014 season.  Current players and committed freshmen should be allowed to transfer without penalty and without loss of eligibility.  And Penn State should establish a victim’s relief fund for abused children in Pennsylvania in an amount equal to at least 75% of their 2011 TV revenue.  None of that will make up for what has happened but neither will Jerry Sandusky’s prison sentence make up for it.  What NCAA sanctions will do is what Sandusky’s prison sentence does; it makes clear that this sort of action will not be tolerated no matter what the status of the offender.  Since there is no possible way to make the punishment meet the crime, this will have to do.

So what, you may be asking, does any of this have to do with theology?  Simply this; sin.  We in the church are called to speak against sin and in favor of virtue in the world.  How we live, the good and the bad, impacts our world.  We are all responsible for our actions and we must be prepared to reap what we sow.  Too often we in the church get wrapped up in speaking of human sinfulness in terms of eternal and salvific contexts.  When we get distracted by thoughts of the hereafter and we forget that our sin has very real consequences in the world, we allow it to have control over our present while we are obsessing about the future.  The church has a theological stake in speaking up for a world in which those who do harm to others are brought to justice and in breaking down structures of power that protect those wrongdoers in the name of money, prestige, power, or even winning percentages.  We need to challenge our culture of no consequences by showing just how actions impact the world.

I am not suggesting that law enforcement or the NCAA become the enforcement wing of the church or that Penn State should be punished for some sort of commandment violating.  They should be punished for violating the laws that we all share as a society and the rules they share as an NCAA school.  By breaking those laws and rules, Penn State violated covenants.  If those covenants are broken without consequence, the world will become deaf to the vocabulary of covenant that we in the church are called to proclaim. 

Whatever we believe about the hereafter, certainly we can all agree that sin is alive and well in the world and we, the church, have a stake in creating communities in which covenants of all kinds are respected and violations of covenant bring consequences.

For the love of the game, for the love of God, the NCAA needs to act and show the world that another Penn State will not be tolerated.