Necessarily swift.
Necessarily severe.
Necessarily unprecedented.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association on Monday imposed what arguably are the most punitive and corrective actions in NCAA history in the aftermath of the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal.
In response to Penn State's “conspiracy of silence” at the highest administrative levels — the product of “an athletic culture that went horribly awry” — the association stopped short of imposing the “death penalty” — suspending the football program — but imposed sanctions that are concomitantly worse and constructive.
Penn State will pay a $60 million fine, the money used to establish a nationwide endowment for anti-child-sexual-abuse programs. The Nittany Lions football team will be barred from all postseason play for four years.
Football scholarships will be drastically reduced. All wins from 1998 to 2011 will be vacated.
The school will be on probation for five years. And there will be strict monitoring.
Prudently, Penn State, which removed the iconic statue of late coach Joe Paterno from outside Beaver Stadium over the weekend, has agreed to the sanctions. In reality, it had no choice.
“Punishment is a sort of medicine,” Aristotle once wrote. And the NCAA has delivered a necessary and appropriate dose.
