The NCAA is going to announce Penn State’s punishment in a press conference in the morning. Details have been leaking out all day. If what I’m hearing is correct, I think I am going to approve of their solution. My idea was that the NCAA should aim to punish the guilty, set a severe example for other sports programs, and do their best not to create a bunch of collateral damage. Rather than destroying the football program, which would punish kids who did nothing wrong, fans who did nothing wrong, and schools on Penn State’s schedule that did nothing wrong, why not just take all their money away for a really, really long time? I would have fined them a sum equal to their expected profits from football for the next five years, while banning them for participating in bowls for five years, and stripping them of all football scholarships for two years.

They could keep playing football under those circumstances, but they couldn’t profit from it, and they’d have to recruit student athletes. Their team would suck for quite a while, but the kids who are already there would have a chance to show their stuff to the NFL scouts. No other teams would lose revenues through no fault of their own. And Penn State football fans would at least have a team to root for, even if they didn’t win a single game. And this would definitely be a deterrent to other programs thinking about covering up grossly immoral and illegal activity.

In any case, it appears that the sanctions will be something along these lines.

Penn State University will be hit with fines in excess of $30 million as part of “significant, unprecedented penalties” expected to be announced Monday by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a source familiar with the case told CNN on Sunday…

…While the school’s football program will not face the so-called “death penalty” that would have prevented the team from playing in the fall, the school might have preferred a one-year suspension because of the severity of the scholarship losses, postseason sanctions and other penalties, the source said.

“If I were Penn State or any other school and were given both options, I’d pick the death penalty,” the source said, adding the range of sanctions “is well beyond what has been done in the past” and “far worse than closing the program for a year.”

…While not divulging specifics, the source said, “The penalties go well beyond the loss of a scholarship or not being able to go to a bowl game.”

I’ve been a Penn State football fan my whole life. So, this whole thing has been painful to watch. But I realized immediately that Paterno needed to resign and that some people needed to go to prison. There’s no defense for what they did. At this point, knowing more facts, I think Paterno should have gone to jail. The NCAA’s job isn’t to do the prosecutor’s job. The NCAA needs to worry less about meting out biblical justice than on sending a message to other sports programs that kids come before profits.