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Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Open Letter from Trustee Joel Myers

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Reprinted below is an open letter sent by BoT member Joel Myers to those who have communicated with him regarding the NCAA sanctions and the Sandusky situation.

Myers has been vocal about his position regarding the NCAA sanctions from the start. Don’t expect that to change. Read my report of his impassioned speech to the BoT at a retreat last August.  In this letter, he calls upon the NCAA to admit its wrongdoing and fix it.

This is a great time for jumping on the NCAA, so I like the timing of Myers’ letter. Keep up the pressure.

From: Joel Myers <myersj@accuweather.com>
Sent: Thu, Feb 28, 2013 4:53 pm
Subject: From Joel Myers

This is in response to the many emails I have received over the last couple of months.  I am taking the liberty of also sending it to those who have corresponded with me previously.

Under the guise of helping children, Jerry Sandusky victimized them. Those victims continue to suffer to this day. Some were victimized on our campus, and we grieve and take as much responsibility for that as is humanly possible.

By shining the light on what happened and becoming a leader against child sexual abuse, Penn State is working to save tens of thousands of potential future victims nationwide from a similar fate, as well as help those who have suffered here. Education and awareness is the key to reducing sexual abuse, which is a plague upon this nation. Education is what we are all about. One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused. Sexual abuse is not a rarity. It is all too common in this society. We are learning the extent it has happened not only at Penn State but at other colleges, universities and institutions of all kinds.

Jerry Sandusky is convicted as a sick and monstrous man and the courts will judge others alleged to have enabled him to continue, and that is fair and appropriate.

But two wrongs do not make a right.  And as I have been saying from the hour that the NCAA sanctions were forced upon Rod Erickson, under threat, they were neither just nor appropriate.  In its rush to judgment the NCAA took unprecedented actions against Penn State based solely on its incorrect interpretation of the Freeh Report and without any due diligence or due process and in clear violation of its own rules. By doing so, the NCAA wronged hundreds of thousands of innocents through the sanctions it imposed upon Penn State and did untold damage to our institution.

When the Board first found out about the Sandusky situation it took immediate action, and hired Freeh as Special Investigative Counsel (SIC) to provide an independent report so that we could take corrective actions in governance, structure and administrative procedures where necessary.  Freeh had seemed credible based on the positions he held such as FBI Director.

A report can only be accepted or adopted by the Penn State Board of Trustees through a majority vote, which never occurred in the case of the Freeh Report.  Contrary to the belief of many, it is important to make clear that the Freeh Report was never accepted nor was it adopted by the Board under the Charter of the University.

Freeh’s report and his speech in front of a nationwide audience at the time he released his report were presented like an indictment, drawing what Freeh characterized as “reasonable” conclusions. Unfortunately Freeh, under the light of the television camera, made harmful statements that went beyond what was in his actual, written report.  And now, the recently released independent Thornburgh, Clemente and Berlin Reports each suggest there are flaws in both the facts and the conclusions of the Freeh Report.

As I have previously stated on many occasions, I strongly hold that the NCAA should never have implemented sanctions against Penn State based on the Freeh report for many reasons and the report was not commissioned for this purpose.  The criticisms presented by respected reviewers about the facts and conclusions of the Freeh Report would seem to add additional credence to my previous concerns.

Freeh and certainly the NCAA misunderstood what was talked about as a “culture of reverence” around the football program.  To most Penn Staters this does not mean that football was out of control, or as Ed Ray said a “football first” culture.  I believe the term “reverence” meant there has been respect among the Penn State nation, including the faculty, staff, Administration, students, and alumni, because Penn State has always stood for the highest levels of integrity of academics, including real grades, real courses, real class attendance, real performance in the class room and very high graduation rates by our student athletes from a prestigious and demanding university.  I experienced that personally as a faculty member over 17 years and other faculty members at Penn State will attest to a similar experience.  That type of reverence should be supported by the NCAA and all who value the contributions to society of institutions of higher learning.

Regarding the Freeh report, although some of the facts and conclusions appear to have been wrong, that does not mean his recommendations are wrong.  It is the Board’s duty to consider all serious recommendations to improve Penn State and to implement reforms and take any other appropriate actions that are in the best interest of the University – those recommendations provided by Freeh, as well as the suggestions from the Auditor General, Faculty Senate and any others whose suggestions that the Board believes will lead to better governance and administration I believe will be adopted.

George Mitchell (former Senate Majority Leader, one of the most highly respected people in the United States, who has served as a special envoy for Presidents of the United States for Northern Ireland and Middle East peace, and negotiated for Major League baseball, and who is universally respected for his credibility and judgment) was appointed the independent Athletics Integrity Monitor pursuant to Penn State’s Consent Decree with the NCAA.  In his first quarterly report in November, he stated “Penn State’s Board of Trustees and its administration appear determined to implement, swiftly and in good faith, the recommendations for reform that were identified in the Freeh Report … dedicated substantial time and resources to accomplishing these objectives.”

Senator Mitchell also appeared personally before the Board in January and expanded on his report, took questions from Board members, including me, praised Penn State’s work in implementing recommendations, and sent a positive message of cooperation and progress – this from one of the most respected and esteemed individuals in the nation.

We can not change the past, but we can do all the right things going forward.  Penn State has become a world leader in the fight to prevent child abuse, including establishing many new policies, procedures and positions, and training and educating more than 10,000 people in various aspects of child abuse. If there is any good from this tragedy, it is the spotlight that has been shined upon this epidemic of child abuse and the efforts to stop it.

What Penn State has accomplished in moving quickly to make positive changes goes far above and beyond what many could have imagined. This establishes Penn State as a clear leader in ethical and moral standards in intercollegiate athletics.

I call on the NCAA and the news media to recognize this – to acknowledge that whatever happened in the past we dealt with quickly and out in the open and that Penn State, as an institution, is moving vigorously to do the right thing.

In fact, by issuing the sanctions, the NCAA took the exact wrong action, not only violating their own rules and procedures, but additionally forcing Penn State’s President to violate the very principles of the Freeh report’s recommendations by accepting the sanctions without briefing, consultation or approval from the Board. Whether intentional or not, these actions and the ensuing damage to Penn State has cost the university hundreds of millions of dollars.

I again and vigorously call upon the NCAA to immediately remove the harmful and counterproductive sanctions.  One, they were based on an inaccurate interpretation of the Freeh findings.  Two, they were in clear violation of the NCAA’s own rules.  Three, they have wronged thousands of innocents.  Four, they have damaged the University.  Five, they have sent the exact opposite and wrong message to people and institutions throughout the nation: that swift and decisive action to address and cure a bad situation is to be condemned, not rewarded.

The NCAA was wrong and it is time for them to admit it and do the right thing themselves.

 Joel N. Myers is founder, president and chairman of the board of AccuWeather, Inc., an American commercial weather service. AccuWeather provides forecasts and data to over 175,000 clients around the world and serves millions more through its free website, AccuWeather.com. AccuWeather’s global headquarters is located in State College, Pennsylvania, and employs more than 400 people, over 70% of whom are Penn State graduates. He has been a member of the Penn State Board of Trustees since 1982.

NCAA Executive Committee gives Emmert a vote of confidence

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“The NCAA Executive Committee is as worthless as the PSU BOT.” —Katie Bartoo

NCAA Executive Committee chair and Moo U. president Lou Anna K. Simon, issued a nebulous statement entitled “NCAA Executive Committee Maps Regulatory Pathway; Endorses Mark Emmert” in which she used much flowery language to extol the virtues of Mark Emmert, to wit:

“The NCAA Executive Committee continues to support the association’s broad-based reform agenda.  This reform agenda must include meaningful change in the regulatory process beyond the changes in enforcement that have already been enacted.

We, as the Executive Committee, on Friday affirmed our expectation that the association move forward with the next phase of its regulatory review. A thorough examination and subsequent improvement of processes, policies, procedures and investigative tools is necessary. Developing a mechanism for monitoring adherence with policies, while also reviewing the interaction between the legal and regulatory staffs, is key to moving forward. In short, we demand the highest level of integrity and accountability not only from our peers but also from the national office. While progress has been made, additional important work remains.

Mark Emmert was hired to lead a major transformation of the NCAA.  Much has been accomplished without fanfare, such as academic reforms, enhanced fiscal accountability and organizational transparency. The Executive Committee and President Emmert recognize there is much yet to do and that the road to transformational change is often bumpy and occasionally controversial.  Therefore, on Friday the Executive Committee unanimously affirmed its confidence in Mark’s leadership as president and its support for his ongoing efforts to implement these essential and historic reforms.”

Hmmmm, “transformational change.” Is that the analogue of static sameness?  As yesterday’s article confirms, the NCAA has always been a bastion of bullshit, and this memo is typical of the obfuscation inherent thereto.

Yet another babe has Emmert’s six. However, there is one who definitely never has and never will.

Our local PSU alumni association chapter president succinctly stated, “The NCAA Executive Committee is as worthless as the PSU BOT.” I couldn’t agree more.

Sudden Impact: Skeleton in Delany’s Closet

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We haven’t had a good Sudden Impact slugfest in a while, but I felt like hitting you with a parting shot before the weekend rolls around. Today’s food for thought will reveal some cool little facts. Artificially Sweetened and I are going up to the Holy Land to watch the Penguins play the Lightning this weekend; accordingly, this turkey probably won’t be around when the proverbial shit hits the fan.

Jim Delany
Jim Delany, Big Ten Commissioner

With all this talk about the NCAA’s hypocrisy of late, lots of reporters have been digging up historical examples of NCAA malfeasance. Long buried tidbits that meant little “back then” suddenly seem relevant. The latest “Where Are They Now?” factoid involves our favorite B1Gshot, Jim Delany.

Rewind the tape to 1978. A younger, hornier Jim Delany was then an investigator for the NCAA. Here’s an AP story I dug up from Page 28 of the March 1, 1978 Toledo Blade, buried among the bowling scores (damning portion in bold red):

MISSION, Kan (AP)   The executive director of the NCAA says an investigator’s involvement with a young woman in Mississippi was unrelated to an investigation at the University of Mississippi.

Walter Byers, executive director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, issued a six-page statement Tuesday disputing the congressional testimony of former NCAA employee Brent Clark.

Clark, testifying Monday before a congressional subcommittee proving the workings of the NCAA, said the association used “manipulative and corrupt” tactics to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by its 800 member institutions.

As an example, Clark charged that an athlete at the University of Mississippi, James Jordan, had provided an investigator, Jim Delany, “with the services of a young lady.”

Clark said Delany then went to Mississippi coach Ken Cooper and told him that he wouldn’t turn in data on Jordan to his superiors because he did not want them to learn about the young lady.

Byers said he talked with Delany, who is single, about the charges and also reviewed the cases Clark said were involved.

“It appears that Mr. Clark has tried to exploit personal information, unrelated to any infractions case, which was obtained by him during an informal, friend-to-friend conversation with Mr. Delany.”

Clark, Byers said, cast the information in a new context “in an apparent effort to give credibility to his charges against the NCAA staff, even at the expense of a friend.”

Clark testified that Bill Hunt, who heads the enforcement unit and was one of Clark’s superiors at the NCAA, once suggested that Clark obtain an interview with a young athlete by telling him he could get a tryout with the Kansas City Kings. Clark said he declined to carry out the suggestion.

According to Byers, Clark had called Hunt asking for assistance in locating the player, Major Jones. Hunt called the general manager of the Kings, who located Jones, Byers said.

“Mr. Hunt never offered a professional basketball tryout opportunity to Major Jones in exchange for his assistance and never suggested to Mr. Clark that he make such an offer.”

Byers noted that Kings’ general manager, Joe Axelson, has also denied Clark’s accusations.

Delany would have been 30 in 1978. He had received his J.D. from UNC in 1973 and then worked as counsel to the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee until being hired as staff attorney for the North Carolina Justice Department in 1974. The following year, he took a job with NCAA as an enforcement representative, and remained there for four years. Hmmm. Then he moved on to serving as commissioner for the Ohio Valley conference until 1989, when he was appointed commissioner of the Big Ten.

I hope the unnamed female was worth it, although Delany seems to have emerged unscathed.

Interesting, eh? The NCAA’s dirtiness never ceases to astound this turkey, even if it resurfaces from 35 years ago!

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But wait! There’s more! Robert Wheel of SB*Nation expounds on why firing Mark Emmert would not be enough to fix the NCAA. My friend RD was reading this article when the following paragraphs popped out at him:

It’s tempting to blame the NCAA’s current problems on president Mark Emmert, but they long predate him. Investigators have always been a problem with the NCAA. Take a look at this excerpt from the Congressional Record in 1978 that Sports by Brooks uncovered. Congress found out that a recruit bought off then-NCAA investigator Jim Delany (yes, THAT Jim Delany) by giving him a date with one of his friends. Delany then told the Ole Miss football coach that he wouldn’t report his findings because the recruit had dirt on him.

Flash forward 35 years and NCAA investigators don’t look much different. Ameen Najjar broke the law by paying Nevin Shapiro’s lawyer, used a burner phone to contact Shapiro in prison and even deposited money into his prison commissary account. At this point you can’t even tell the investigators from the people that they’re investigating.

[Links are reproduced from the SB*Nation article verbatim. This turkey makes no claims as to their veracity. —TNT]

So, we have not one but two of our nemeses presumably on the hot seat because of their “don’t give a shit” attitudes in connection with their tenure at the NCAA.

But Wheel concludes, as his title says, that firing Emmert would be good, but not good enough:

Getting rid of Emmert would be good. He’s not interested in real reform, but unless the NCAA starts paying players, then nothing will change.

Amateurism is a malignant tumor; it infects everything that it touches. When your organization is predicated on unpaid labor, it’s forced to use underhanded tactics to attempt to root out violations of that policy because there’s no legal way to accomplish the goal of maintaining that unpaid labor force. The NCAA is a plantation, and when you run a plantation there’s no way that you’ll have clean enforcers.

I agree. The NCAA is a cesspool of hypocrisy, and that relates directly to the ostensible premise under which it is chartered: to protect so-called amateur athletes from the influence of the big, bad buck while the organization conducts its own form of exploitation of the supposed student-athletes.

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The most recent high-profile morass, of course, is the Miami caper, in which the NCAA improperly obtained testimony against a booster accused of transgressions with players. The NCAA found the University of Miami purportedly guilty of having a lack of institutional control — its favorite harsh finding to provide a springboard for penalization of its target. Apparently, the NCAA’s own lack of institutional control is not an issue, but I digress. Miami president Donna Shalala, who probably inherited her balls from previous boss Bill Clinton, fired back a strongly worded missive to the NCAA telling them where they could go.

Apparently, that bird-flip pissed off the NCAA, because the settlement talks that were initiated last week have now been broken off by the NCAA. Emmert still thinks he can flex his institutional muscles.

Pretty defensive, in my analysis. Emmert always did have problems with strong women beating on him. Just look at Vicky Triponey.

Harrumph!

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Now let’s move on to other news in brief. (No, I’m not writing this in my briefs!)

No big surprises here, but Penn State’s lawyers declare former wide receiver coach Mike McQueary’s lawsuit against the University to be without merit.

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Meanwhile, in another non-surprise, the Tickle Monster’s attorneys have filed his appeal to Pennsylvania Superior Court.

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Finally, State College continues its crackdown on “State Patrick’s Day” drinking by interdicting the source. I guess students will just have to do their drinking in Bellefonte or in the woods just like the olden days, right Tammo?