Schools weigh priorities in wake of PSU scandal

IOWA CITY - The sordid mess at Penn State University where an assistant coach sexually abused children on campus and high-ranking officials either ignored or directly covered up the incident has amplified issues of governance and culture among Big Ten Conference schools.

League officials, including University of Iowa President Sally Mason, are asking themselves whether high-profile coaches wield too much influence over their institutions. More importantly, those officials wonder how they can prevent an unmanageable concentration of power in the wake of college athletics' most infamous scandal.

“I don't think there's a single university president in this country who sits in his seat like I do with a school that has a Division I football program, one that spends a significant amount of money annually on athletics, that doesn't look carefully now at Penn State and say, ‘What lessons have we learned from this?'” said Mason, who chairs the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors. “'What are we going to do moving forward to ensure that the culture doesn't somehow get so oft-kilter that it skews all of the priorities of the institution?'

“That's the way all of us think about this in a given day. It could happen anywhere,” Mason said.

Big Ten proposals

Legendary football coach Joe Paterno's grip was recognizable on Penn State's campus. Paterno had coached Penn State for 46 years and earned the Division I record for most career wins. When his former assistant Jerry Sandusky was accused of sexually assaulting boys on campus, Paterno actively stonewalled an investigation, according to a university-commissioned report released this summer. Paterno dissuaded university officials from turning in Sandusky, who later was convicted on 45 counts of sex abuse.

Last November, when a grand jury report accused two senior Penn State officials of perjury, Penn State descended into chaos. Yet Paterno openly defied calls for immediate resignation, which left Big Ten officials concerned about the institution's proper governance structure.

“My question at that juncture was with a president who had either resigned or been terminated, with an athletic director who had been indicted and a football coach that was telling the board of trustees that they should get on with other business,” Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said. ““What (would this) say to the NCAA, the Big Ten or anybody else who was interested about where we were at that moment in time? So I asked our lawyers what authority do I have to act. The answer was none.”

Amid massive protests, Penn State's board of trustees fired Paterno - who died in January - before he coached another game.

To prevent a high-profile coach or athletics program from running roughshod over a university, Big Ten administrators have discussed a complex set of checks and balances. In a May 21 draft titled “standards and procedures for safeguarding institutional control of intercollegiate athletics,” each Big Ten university will be asked to apply stress tests or criteria to ensure members are accountable to one another for its athletics' department's actions.

Mason called the 18-page document “a work in progress,” and said after the group of presidents meet later this year, they will “give it a very thorough thrashing.” She hopes to have it ratified by next June.

Among the bullet points in the document, schools would establish clear alignment and direct delegation of authority. The schools would not allow for interference with normal admission processes, compliance issues or disciplinary measures.

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said the goal is to provide clarity in an often nebulous management structure - unlike professional sports - and empower campus officials in the face of a high-profile public figure like a coach.

“In college sometimes there's a question about who the owner is because power is diffuse,” Delany said. “Trustees, presidents, faculty, athletic directors, compliance directors ...

“So our challenge going forward, as I've thought seriously about this question, is how do we make the lines brighter? How do we make sure that the coach fits with the institution and not vice versa?”

Emergency authority

The draft includes a controversial provision that would grant Delany emergency authority to “preserve the integrity of institutional control for the Conference and Member Institutions.” Both Delany and Mason said the clause will not be included into the final version.

In July, the NCAA levied a four-year bowl ban, a $60 million fine and a wave of scholarship losses deemed necessary for Penn State to alter its priorities. The Big Ten added to the penalties by preventing Penn State from receiving bowl revenue for the next four seasons.

NCAA President Mark Emmert said the penalties are vital for Penn State to change its culture.

“The lesson here is one of maintaining the appropriate balance of our values,” Emmert said in a news conference. “Why do we play sports in the first place, and does that culture ever get to a point where it overwhelms the values of the academy, those things that we hold dear?

“If you find yourself in a position where the athletic culture is taking precedent over the academic culture, then a variety of bad things can occur.”

Iowa Athletics Director Gary Barta said having the right culture is more than just a catchy value statement.

“Culture is just a word,” he said. “Changing a culture to me means, making sure you're defining exactly what expectations are, exactly what your goals are and going forward from there. So to me culture is about defining goals, defining expectations, your history and your tradition and putting those all together.”

Issues at Iowa

Iowa athletics has faced its own issues related to athletic culture, beginning with star basketball player Pierre Pierce. In 2002, Pierce was accused of sexually assaulting a female student-athlete. He reached a plea deal brokered by university officials that allowed him to stay on the basketball team. In 2005, he was charged with another sexual assault and was dismissed from the team.

In 2007, football players Abe Satterfield and Cedric Everson were accused of raping a female student-athlete at Hillcrest Residence Hall. A pair of investigations - including an independent inquiry that cost the university $250,000 - noted the university badly managed the incident but followed the correct policies and procedures.

The policies since have been altered, which disallows a department to formally or informally participate in a sexual assault investigation.

“That was difficult to go through. It was horrific on many levels,” Barta said. “But one of the things that I always felt good about was there was transparency. We followed every policy. Later it came out that the policies were changed. But Kirk (Ferentz) was very forthright, I was very forthright. We tried to do everything. I'm not trying to say we did everything perfect at Iowa. That's not the case at all.”

From 2007 through early 2008, five different football players were charged with felonies. All immediately were suspended and never played another down of football at Iowa. None of the five were convicted of felonies.

University structure

Despite their visibility and financial well-being, athletics fit under the university structure - not the other way around, Mason said. She said proper culture starts with balance, integrity and a healthy relationship between academics and athletics.

“It often comes down to too much emphasis on these things because the culture becomes one of fans idolizing the coach or perhaps idolizing the entire program because of the coach,” Mason said. “I think we saw just how dangerous that can be in the context unfortunately at Penn State.”