Kudos to the juniors and seniors who decided to stay with the program instead of jumping ship.

Granted, the $60 million fine will sting, but Penn State also has an endowment of close to $2 billion and the largest dues-paying alumni group of any American university. $60 million is car-ashtray change to PSU.

The loss of scholarships will also be a challenge, but not that big of one. See, the guys who won’t get scholarships are the third place-kicker and the sixth left guard on the roster. The big challenge will be the stigma of going to such a scandal-ridden program, but even that has been mitigated by the fact there wasn’t a mass exodus of players given the fact they were given a free shot to split. The bottom line is that anybody tho has real talent that commits to PSU will still get a scholarship.

The probationary period means nothing because if Penn State doesn’t fix the cultural and leadership miasma that allowed this problem to happen in the first, then they deserve to get blown up.

As for the bowl ban, USC is coming off a two-year ban with no discernable effect. The reason is that no matter what, big programs like USC and Penn State have 7 or 8 home game a year in front of huge crowds, and thanks to the explosion of cable/satellite television, Penn State will still be on television every Saturday anyway. Not to mention, PSU football was headed into the level of the mid-level bowl games anyway. Going to the Ticket City Bowl or the Little Caesars’ Pizza Bowl doesn’t really do anything for a big program. Back in the days when SMU got the “Death Penalty,” there weren’t 35+ bowl games and the Big Ten Network. Even today, there’s really only about ten bowl games that matter, and Penn State wasn’t headed for any of those anytime soon anyway.

The bottom line. Penn State will still get recruits (although not as many), they will still be on television, and they will still win some games. That’s hardly irrelevant.