You're minimizing the very clear message to all schools that real crimes aren't nearly as important as preserving football legacy.
These were not typical sports or football violations, to be punished as you would a program that violates stupid NCAA rules. These were very real crimes that went on for decades for the sake of the glorious program. It was deemed, by many, that the reputation of this program was greater than any crime within it. It's disgusting and completely indefensible--PSU hasn't been punished at all, and when you compare that other programs suffer greater with football violations than PSU did after committing real crimes against real children, you are sending the wrong message.
PSU does not deserve to have a football program--period.
I guess we just see this differently.
Criminal matters are not for the NCAA to punish by killing programs. Criminal matters are handled by the justice system, the NCAA should be minimally involved for true criminal proceedings.
This is where things get messy, because you are right, the school should have been punished a bit more severely, but the justice system cannot punish an organization like a school, not so easily at least, but the NCAA shouldn't be metering out the kind of punishment the school needs either. That belongs more in the wheelhouse of, well I'm not really sure. It's not something a regional accreditation organization can handle, unless... perhaps it could be?
Again, the program fucked up, not disagreeing one bit there. And they fucked up in a way that most everyone finds vehemently incomprehensible. But, again, I'm not defending the actions, but the right of the program to exist outside of this controversy. Just because the program was ran by disgusting pricks, doesn't mean the program itself is flawed. The management of said program, and some leadership at the school, is where the fault still resides. And they have been punished, some not severely enough but still handled by the justice system, and the school for when the system didn't go far enough.
Sure, you can see this as a message that if you go this far criminally, the NCAA isn't going to completely erase your program so... let's do it! But, let's be real here, this is a very unique situation that is unprecedented in the NCAA. The NCAA's punishments have typically dealt with transgressions that somehow involved the team, sport, or coaching staff as it relates to the team and sportsmanship. Illegal bribes, paying players, using illegal recruiting tactics, etc. This situation had, ultimately, nothing to do with the teams, and didn't have anything to do with the athletic programs
as it relates to sports. This was something shady as fuck happening behind everything, something that wasn't impacting fairness in the sport or anything along those lines. Let me be clear, I am not defending the program here, and not minimizing the impact and scope of the depravity, just laying out the facts of the case.
Think of this like a business. Unless the business itself through all the layers was truly involved in an illegal scheme, they almost always survive when various leadership and management has been linked to criminal activity of any scope. You may find yourself disgusted with the business for the association with these individuals, but the business usually cleans house and distances themselves from the matter, and does everything in its power to prevent it from happening again.
So the same message that other schools may get from this has already been heard loud and clear all across the country: don't get your organization involved with criminal activity, and if your executives do, get rid of them and clean house; or else your whole organization is going to go down the drain.
This is what we have here. Let's face it, when even the President of the school itself gets indicted and is forced to resign, but the school can otherwise go on, that signals the investigation only found a few key individuals covering this up. Yes they may have been at the top, and one ran the entire AD, but the investigation proved that it wasn't every single member of the AD, it wasn't every coach, every assistant to the assistant, every personal trainer. It was a few key who started at one point and continued up the totem pole but skipped all the other underlings along the way. The program wasn't fucked up, the leadership was, the majority of the program was clean and entirely unaware. Those that were aware have been dealt with.
I know it goes against what a lot of people want to believe should happen, but I just cannot in good faith get behind punishing all of the athletic programs. You can argue all you want that these programs aren't necessary for the school, but that isn't even the point.
I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this. We can all agree that the people who most needed punishment have received it to some degree, and that their acts were disgusting.