Penn St.: NCAA will have info in days

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A Failure Of Leadership

Jeremy Schaap weighs in on the Freeh report, Penn State's lack of concern for Sandusky's victims and restoring confidence in Penn State.Tags: Jeremy Schaap, Louis Freeh, Freeh Report, Penn State, Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, Jay Paterno, Mark May, Matt Millen

A Failure Of Leadership

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Penn State said it will respond within days to the NCAA's demand for information as the governing body decides whether the university should face penalties -- including a possible shutdown of its storied football program -- in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

Penn State president Rodney Erickson said Tuesday he doesn't want to "jump to conclusions" about possible sanctions after the head of the NCAA declared the so-called death penalty has not been ruled out.

The NCAA is investigating whether Penn State lost "institutional control" over its athletic program and violated ethics rules. The probe had been on hold for eight months while former FBI director Louis Freeh conducted an investigation on behalf of the school's board of trustees. Freeh's 267-page report, released last week, asserted that late football coach Joe Paterno and three top officials buried allegations against Sandusky, the retired defensive coordinator, more than a decade ago to protect the university's image.

Sandusky was convicted last month of sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. He awaits sentencing.

Penn State, with the results of its own investigation in hand, can turn its attention to the NCAA, Erickson said.

"The NCAA has indicated that they'd like me to respond ... as quickly as possible now that we have the Freeh report," he said. "So we've already started the process of starting to compose that response. We'll do so over the course of the next few days and get that response back as soon as possible, and we'll then engage in discussions with the NCAA."

In a PBS interview Monday night, NCAA president Mark Emmert said he's "never seen anything as egregious as this in terms of just overall conduct and behavior inside a university." He said he doesn't want to take "anything off the table" if there's a finding that Penn State violated NCAA rules.

The last time the NCAA shut down a football program was in the 1980s, when Southern Methodist University was forced to drop the sport because of extra benefits violations. After the NCAA suspended the SMU program for a year, the school decided not to play in 1988, either, as it tried to regroup.

Erickson would not say whether he thought Penn State deserved to have its football program yanked.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves here," Erickson told The Associated Press as he conducted a round of media interviews in his office on Tuesday. "Let's wait for this process to unfold. President Emmert has said the NCAA will take a deliberate and deliberative process in addressing this, so I don't think we should jump to any conclusions at this point."

Schools often propose sanctions to the governing body. Erickson pointed out that Penn State already has given $2.6 million in bowl revenues to its new center for child abuse research and treatment and to the Pennsylvania Coalition against Rape, a group that operates rape crisis centers across the state.

"We've already started to impose sanctions in the sense that we took away $2.6 million of athletic department funds," Erickson said. "Surely we'll have to do more, but we're already on that road."

Erickson also addressed the controversy swirling around the statue of Paterno outside Beaver Stadium, saying that no decision has been made on whether to take it down.

"I'm still in the process of talking with members of my leadership team," he said. "I'll want to talk with members of the board and others. And we will make a decision and we will make the right decision based on what we believe is the best course of action for the university."

Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press

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