The NCAA board of governors and Penn State trustees agreed to a deal Friday which reinstates 111 football wins under former head coach Joe Paterno — making him (again) the coach with the most victories in college football history.
The deal also restructures penalties levied against the university in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
The $60 million fine remains, “but allows the university and state to spend it on child protection services in Pennsylvania.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
The agreement ends at least two of the legal battles that erupted after the 2012 sanctions, and marks a victory for thousands of Penn State and Paterno supporters who argued that the punishment of the school and its celebrated coach was unjustified.
The NCAA framed the settlement as a superseding agreement that rewards Penn State for its progress, continues monitoring the school, and helps victims.
Both sides thus avoided a Commonwealth Court trial next month in which lawyers for Corman and McCord would have been likely to grill NCAA brass about dozens of internal e-mails and the decision-making process that preceded the sanctions.
Matt Haverstick, a lawyer for Corman and McCord, said Friday: “At trial, we would have put on a case that showed we believed that the NCAA desired a particular result not because it cared about Penn State especially, but because it cared about being, as one of the deponents testified, the new sheriff in town. We think the evidence would have shown the NCAA used Penn State and the Sandusky horror for its own end, to be the new sheriff in town.”
Many critics wanted an apology from the NCAA.
“As we have said before, our 40,000 members want to shine the court’s spotlight into the dark corners of the original consent decree and hold accountable those who fraudulently scapegoated the entire Penn State community,” said Maribeth Roman Schmidt, spokeswoman for Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship, a pro-Joe Paterno organization.
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