Penn State Sanctions: Fair or Unfair?

Updated 3:06 p.m.

A day after late football coach Joe Paterno's statue was removed from its spot outside Penn State's stadium, the National Collegiate Athletic Association brought the hammer down on the disgraced university for its role in the sexual abuse of children by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

The NCAA has fined Penn State $60 million, vacated all of its football wins from 1998 to 2011, imposed a four-year ban on postseason games including the Big Ten championship and bowl games, taken away football scholarships and put the school on five years probation.

Vote in our poll and tell us what you think in the comments. Are the sanctions fair, too harsh or not harsh enough?

In a statement from the NCAA, posted on the Plain Dealer Monday morning, NCAA president Mark Emmert said, “At our core, we are educators. Penn State leadership lost sight of that.” 

The vacating of 112 wins, 111 under Paterno, means that Paterno is no longer Division I college football's winningest coach.

Any current or future Penn State football player can leave the school and play elsewhere without loss of eligibility.

While it's not the death penalty, Pete Thamel of the New York Times wrote, these sanctions could hurt the football program for years to come as players transfer and high school players who committed to or considered Penn State reconsider their plans.

One local Penn State recruit, Avon's Ross Douglas, has already and will explore other options.

The Big Ten also brought punishment down on Penn State Monday, declaring that Penn State will not share in the conference's bowl revenues during the years Penn State is banned from postseason play.

In a statement Monday, Paterno's family complains that the sanctions "defame" Paterno, and that they were not given "input."