Slow death for Penn State

I still haven't decided what I think about this:

The governing body of U.S. college sports fined Penn State University $60 million and voided its football victories for the past 14 seasons in an unprecedented rebuke for the school's failure to stop coach Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse of children.

NCAA President Mark Emmert said the school had put "hero worship and winning at all costs" ahead of integrity, honesty and responsibility.

Penn State was not given the so-called "death penalty" that could have suspended its football program but it was banned from post-season bowl games for four years and had the number of scholarships available to players reduced from 25 to 15.

Part of me thinks this was too harsh because it punishes far more people than the ones who in any way had anything to do with the coverup of Sandusky's monstrous behavior -- everybody from merchants who depend on Penn State football to kids who want to go there to join the team to students whose education could be threatened when the university's money starts drying up. Our sense of fair play demands that we hold people accountable for their actions but try to limit the collateral damage our instruments of justice might inflict.

But a part of me thinks they should just have gone ahead and given Penn State the death penalty, banned the program altogether so the university could go on to become some other kind of institution instead of a Big 10 football powerhouse. For one thing, this is really a death penalty, too, just one calling for a long, drawn-out death instead of a quick one. For another, the death penalty would send the message that as important as college sports have become, there are limits to our tolerance of tails that wag dogs. No program's reputation or institution's legacy is justification for the lack of simple human decency that could have prevented much of the sexual abuse Sandusky committed.