The area where legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno’s statue once stood, became an empty space, filled with the air of a scandal on Sunday morning after it was removed by workers. The 900-pound bronze statue, which depicts the late coach waving one extended finger in the air, no longer stands outside Beaver Stadium. Also on Sunday morning, the NCAA gave notice that it plans to announce “corrective and punitive measures” on Monday against Pennsylvania State University, according to the collegiate-sports organization, as the school tries to recover in the aftermath of a child-abuse scandal involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. As part of “significant, unprecedented penalties,” the NCAA also expects to hit the university with fines in excess of $60 million.
The moves trail a report earlier in July from Louis Freeh, a former FBI director, and commissioned trustees that found Paterno and other university officials didn’t act on allegations of sexual abuse involving Sandusky, who was convicted in June on 45 of 48 counts related to abusing 10 young boys over a 15-year period, starting in 1994. Past severe actions against Penn State’s programs have included shutting down the team’s operations for at least a year, the so-called death penalty. “I’ve never seen anything as egregious as this in terms of just overall conduct and behavior inside a university,” said Mark Emmert, the university’s president.
