NCAA Hits Penn State With $60 Million Fine & Vacates Paterno’s Wins From 1998-2011

The NCAA hit Penn State with a $60 Million fine and vacated all of Joe Paterno’s wins from 1998-2011

Pennsylvania State University was fined $60 million as college sports’ governing body penalized the school for its handling of a child sex-abuse case involving assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. It avoided the stiffest punishment, a shutdown of the football program that was at the center of the scandal.

The school also was stripped of all its wins from 1998 through 2011, barred from postseason games for four years and lost 20 total scholarships annually for four seasons, according to a release from the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

The discipline announced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association avoided the so-called death penalty against the program where Joe Paterno, the coach who won a record 409 games, became a focus of the scandal. Paterno’s record will also lose the victories he recorded as coach from 1998 through last season.

The NCAA acted against the State College, Pennsylvania- based school less than two weeks after an investigation found Paterno, who died of lung cancer in January, and other school officials tried to cover up abuse allegations. Sandusky, a football assistant coach for 31 years, was convicted last month on 45 criminal counts tied to the abuse of 10 boys over a 15- year period starting in 1994.

While Penn State avoided having its football program shut down, the NCAA’s “corrective and punitive measures” probably will severely affect a school that ranks sixth all-time with 827 victories at college football’s highest level and won two national titles during Paterno’s 46-year tenure as coach.

It also will have an immense effect on the school’s finances. In the fiscal year ending in 2011, Penn State’s athletic department generated $116.1 million in operating revenue and posted a $14.8 million operating profit, according to school records.

Sports Profits

Of Penn State’s 29 sports teams, only football and men’s basketball were profitable last year, with football generating an operating profit of $43.8 million on $58.9 million in revenue. The Nittany Lions had a 9-4 record last season.

A shutdown of the football program would have cost Penn State and the surrounding community more than $70 million, according to an economic study commissioned by the university for the 2008-09 school year. That included $51.1 million spent on hotels, souvenirs, food, services and entertainment by out- of-state visitors, which represent about 15 percent of those attending games at Beaver Stadium, which has a capacity of more than 106,500.

Penn State has an endowment of $1.3 billion, the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette reported in March, citing Graham Spanier, who was dismissed as university president in the scandal.