Originally Posted by
Toro
It's the right decision, though maybe the university got off lightly. They had to take away the wins.
The reason why they didn't turn Sandusky in was because it would have hurt the football program. By taking the wins away, it hurts the football program retroactively, and acts as a deterrent to those who would turn a blind eye to heinous crimes. Paterno benefited from the crimes. You don't allow those who covered up the crime to benefit from that crime.
The theory is this - If it became known that the crimes began in 1998, from the moment that Paterno and the university decided not to turn Sandusky in, they are involved in a cover-up. At any point in time, you can argue that because Paterno decided to cover up the crimes, he should have been fired. Thus, all the wins after 1998 would never have happened because Paterno would not have been coaching Penn State.
FTR, the NCAA stripped Bowden of 14 wins because of a cheating scandal for which he had no knowledge, the theory being that had the players been caught, they would have been expelled. Because Bowden benefited from the players being on his team, he was stripped of the wins, even though he had no knowledge of the scandal. So the NCAA had no choice but to strip Paterno of the wins.