In considering a punishment for Pennsylvania State University over the Jerry Sandusky scandal, the NCAA has said it will not rule out benching the entire Nittany Lions football program. But the Big Ten could hand down an even harsher penalty—booting the university out of the conference.
The league’s presidents and chancellors could consider that idea as they debate possible sanctions against the university, one Big Ten leader told The Chronicle. And a new set of proposals being circulated among top conference officials would give James E. Delany, the league’s commissioner, more power to punish programs that step outside the lines, including firing coaches himself.
Big Ten leaders are still in the early stages of debating how to handle fallout from the scandal at Penn State. But the independent report released last week by Louis J. Freeh, a former FBI director, cited repeated breakdowns in leadership at the university, providing the clarity that Big Ten officials need to reach a decision, one senior league official said.
The Big Ten Conference Handbook, which governs the league’s operations, does not contain language addressing a situation as egregious as what happened at Penn State, in which a former assistant football coach repeatedly molested children on campus property while university leaders turned a blind eye.
But the conference’s bylaws prescribe potentially severe penalties for member institutions that break far lesser rules. Any Big Ten university that employs or retains workers who intentionally falsify or deliberately fail to provide complete and accurate information during an investigation may be required to “show cause why its membership in the conference should not be suspended or terminated,” the Big Ten’s 2011-12 handbook says.
At least four top Penn State officials—including Graham B. Spanier, the former president, and Timothy M. Curley, the athletic director on administrative leave—failed to paint an accurate picture of how much they knew about Mr. Sandusky, the independent report showed. Both men were part of a culture that tried to “actively conceal” abuse by the former coach, the report said.
The Big Ten’s 12-member Council of Presidents and Chancellors must approve any decision to suspend, expel, or place on probation any member of the conference. According to the conference handbook, expulsion requires a vote of not less than 60 percent of the full council (a Big Ten spokesman said that figure is actually 70 percent, or eight members, which will be reflected in the 2012-13 handbook).
The Big Ten does not have a contingency scheduling plan should Penn State’s football team be banned from playing this or any season, a senior league official told The Chronicle. But fallout from the scandal has many Big Ten leaders on edge.
“This whole situation is unprecedented,” said Sally Mason, president of the University of Iowa and chair of the Council of Presidents and Chancellors. “It’s sports-related, but there were very significant moral, legal, and institutional failures.”
She and her colleagues plan to discuss those problems in coming weeks, but she has no early sign of what they may decide. “Until all of our presidents and chancellors sit down and talk in depth,” she said, “I have no idea of what the outcome is likely to be, and I wouldn’t want to predict.”
Protecting the Brand
Following a December meeting of Big Ten leaders, much of which was taken up by discussions of Penn State, conference officials drafted a set of guidelines to help govern institutional control over athletics.
One impetus was to protect the Big Ten brand, according to an internal league document obtained by The Chronicle. “The development of the standards and procedures is based on the recognition that each member of the conference is affected when any member institution fails to maintain proper control over its intercollegiate athletics programs,” the document says.
While the 18-page plan does not mention the problems at Penn State, several Big Ten presidents and chancellors said the situation there was a catalyst for the league’s action.
“This is a reminder to all of us in the conference that we all rely on each other, and when something bad happens at one institution, we’re all damaged by it,” said Eric W. Kaler, president of the University of Minnesota. “To the degree that we can have more robust guidelines from the conference that we can use to educate people and put best practices forward, we will all benefit.”
To guard against further damage to the Big Ten brand, the conference has proposed requiring member universities to put more power in the hands of campus presidents and athletic directors. The league also wants to require member institutions to have policies and procedures in place that would dissuade rogue boosters and trustees with inappropriate involvement in programs from trying to influence university leaders’ decisions.
The Big Ten’s proposals would require member universities to specify who is making decisions and would ask institutions to establish reporting systems to help assure that those people are actually making the decisions. The Big Ten office would oversee regular audits of universities to identify any weaknesses in those systems, and could issue sanctions against universities for significant failures to comply.
The proposals are designed in part to root out problems that could include coaches or athletic officials who interfere with normal admissions, compliance, hiring, or disciplinary processes, the document says.
By requiring campuses to empower presidents and athletic directors, the conference hopes to insulate those people from improper influence in exercising their authority and to hold them more accountable for their actions.
The Freeh report talks about the undue reverence for football at Penn State and the special status it afforded Joe Paterno, the legendary coach who died in January but whose legacy is now tainted by his response to the Sandusky abuses. While few colleges employ coaches with that level of influence, many have coaches with access to big donors and board members who can usurp the power of presidents and athletic directors.
At least one Big Ten athletic director would welcome the new requirements.
“These standards are really something to help us put up safeguards and put in procedures that will allow us to do a better job with third parties, and to protect our athletes and institutions from unscrupulous characters who try to get engaged in our programs,” said Gene Smith, the athletic director at Ohio State University, where a tattoos-for-memorabilia scandal led to harsh NCAA sanctions last year. “It’s an exercise that takes decisions out of the athletic department and puts them more into the institutional environment.”
Emergency Power
In any disciplinary case that comes before it, the Big Ten’s Council of Presidents and Chancellors would have the power to determine sanctions against member institutions. According to the document, those sanctions could include “financial penalties, restrictions on participating in televised athletic events or in regular or postseason athletic events, probations, suspension, and expulsion.”
The council would also have the authority to penalize individual members of an institution, which could include financial penalties, suspension, or termination of employment, the document says. The league’s commissioner would also have that authority in emergencies.
Under current Big Ten rules, the commissioner does not have that power. The change is one of several that Big Ten universities seem wary of giving the league.
“This document is still a work in progress,” said Ms. Mason, the Iowa president. “Several of our presidents feel it needs more work.”
Another concern: Faculty would appear to have an even smaller voice in athletics decisions if the proposed changes were approved, said two Big Ten faculty leaders. That is a big change for a conference whose original name was the “Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives,” and whose current handbook emphasizes faculty control over athletics.
“Faculty shouldn’t be involved in the day-to-day administration or nitty-gritty of athletics,” said Bruce L. Jaffee, an emeritus professor of business economics and public policy, and a former longtime faculty athletics representative at Indiana University. “But faculty understand the student-athlete perspective and have a way of looking at these issues in quite a different way than the AD or president.”
If Big Ten leaders want to help prevent a Penn State-style scandal from occurring again, they should be careful about giving so much responsibility to presidents and athletic directors, said Carole L. Browne, a professor of biology at Wake Forest University and a former co-chair of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a group of faculty-senate leaders at 59 big-time athletics campuses that pushes for tighter controls over college sports.
“Putting all the power in the hands of presidents and AD’s sets the stage for problems,” she said. “A lot of times, the AD’s motivations are not going to be what’s in the best interest of institutions and students.”
