(via An Icon Falls, and a President With Him - Administration - The Chronicle of Higher Education)
John S. Nichols, an emeritus professor at Penn State who chairs the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a national sports-reform group, has long praised his employer for finding balance between athletics and academic work. The athletic department here, whose motto is “Success With Honor,” has always stood out among its peers. Players graduate. Faculty oversight is strong. And in the 58 years that the NCAA has tracked major violations, Penn State has never committed a single one.Yet three years ago, Mr. Nichols warned of the dangers for an institution that holds itself above the rest.
“Under the mantle of ‘Live by the sword, die by the sword,’” he wrote in The Patriot-News of Harrisburg,”a major athletics scandal would become far more devastating for Penn State than for some peers which have become inured with repeated scandals.”
As he sees it, the stage was set.
