Pennsylvania Will Sue Over NCAA Ban
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett said on Tuesday he will file a federal lawsuit against the NCAA over sanctions it levied against Pennsylvania State University in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal.
Corbett is scheduled to hold a news conference on Wednesday at the Nittany Lion Inn on the Penn State campus to reveal the details of the lawsuit against the governing body of U.S. collegiate sports, his office said.
Sandusky, Penn State’s former defensive coordinator, was convicted in June of 45 counts of sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years, some in the football team’s showers. He was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.
In July, the NCAA 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 assistant coach Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children.
The university recently made the first payment of $12 million, destined for a national fund to support the victims of child abuse. Other sanctions included a ban on the Penn State football team from appearing in bowl games for four years.
NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said the organization did not have any comment as it had not yet received the lawsuit.
The Sandusky scandal sparked a national debate over child sex abuse, embarrassed the university and implicated a number of its top officials including legendary football head coach, the late Joe Paterno.
It was revealed by a state grand jury convened in 2009 by Corbett, then Pennsylvania’s attorney general. Sandusky is now serving 30 to 60 years in prison on 48 charges that he sexually abused 10 youths over more than a decade.
Attorney General-elect Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, has vowed to probe Corbett’s handling of the Penn State case. She has told reporters that she believes that by convening a grand jury in the case that he failed to protect children by delaying prosecution for more than two years.
Corbett, a Republican, has said he welcomes an investigation into how he handled the case.
A poll of Pennsylvania voters last September found they had a poor view of Corbett’s handling of the scandal as attorney general.
The Franklin & Marshall College survey noted that only one in six registered voters thought he did an excellent or good job of investigating the Sandusky case, whereas nearly two thirds thought he did a fair or poor job.
The poll found that more than half of respondents believed the NCAA sanctions imposed as a result of the Sandusky case were unfair.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
