There have been innumerable stories and opinion pieces written about the scanctions the NCAA dropped on the Penn State football program, but two of the strongest paragraphs come from Joe Nocera's opinion piece in the New York Times:

What was most galling about Emmert’s news conference (Note: Emmert is the current president of the NCAA) was its sanctimony. He kept talking about the “values” that athletics was supposed to embody, about how college sports is supposed to be an integral part of academic life, and how it should never overwhelm the mission of the university. “Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people,” he said.

But at big-time sports schools, football is always placed ahead of everything else. The essential hypocrisy of college sports is that too many athletes are not real students — and no one cares. Coaches make millions and lose their jobs if they fail to win. Universities reap millions by filling stadiums and making attractive television deals. They serve as the minor leagues for the pros. Everybody knows this — including the N.C.A.A. The notion that the Penn State case is going to change all of college sports is absurd. College football almost can’t help but corrode academic values. Nothing that happened on Monday is going to change any of that.