Editorial: Penn State's sanctions

The Penn State football program is crippled for four years by a loss of 20 athletic scholarships each year, by a ban on post-season play, and by making it easier for players to transfer (and other schools to raid Penn State's roster). The NCAA imposed a $60 million fine. Also Monday, the Big Ten Conference announced Penn State would forfeit its share of proceeds over the next four years, estimated at $13 million.

Both amounts will go toward child-protection programs. In truth, the Jerry Sandusky molestation case was not a matter for an athletic association but for law enforcement. It would have been, had the late Joe Paterno and university officials not chosen to keep quiet for almost 13 years about allegations that Sandusky was using university facilities and his perks as an ex-coach to sexually abuse young boys.

In an investigation belatedly commissioned by the university, emails turned up showing that Paterno and the administrators he technically reported to were more concerned with the football program's reputation rather than the abused youngsters' welfare. Moreover, Paterno, then the wins leader — nut no longer — in major college football, had become such an institution that the Penn State hierarchy was unwilling, even afraid, to cross him. As officials in a top-flight academic institution, they surely knew of Edmund Burke's oft-cited observation, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," And that is what they did.

Nothing.