With Pennsylvania’s crumbling infrastructure, underfunded public school districts in urban areas, or the privatization of the best lottery system in the country all being leading candidates for “priority agenda issues” for 2013, Governor Corbett – the man who is responsible for firing Joe Paterno – has gone into self-preservation mode by suing the NCAA for sanctions against Penn State University – a move that the university does not even support. Some of us can make a point that the Governor’s lawsuit against the NCAA’s sanctions on the Penn State football program violate some sort of anti-trust agreement, but his actions are nothing more than a gimick to salvage votes from Penn State Alumni and – more importantly – to deflect attention away from a scandal he had a role in creating.
Earlier this morning, our dearest governor made an appearance on CNN confirming that he waited to sue the NCAA until after the football season so those playing football or associated with the program wouldn’t be distracted. As you will see in the video below, Governor Corbett has decided to take a “thanks but no thanks” approach to the NCAA sanctions when he originally supported the punishments last summer, but since then there has been an obvious change of heart, which is not supported by the university. In the video, the governor explained that the NCAA didn’t go through the regular process when it came down to handing out the punishment, but the governor and those at Penn State should be thankful that the program didn’t get the “death penalty.”
The reasons that the governor is suing the NCAA is pretty obvious. The governor wants to polish his unpopular statewide image by any means necessary, even if it means exploiting a scandal that he help set in motion. As we have reported, the governor had received close to $650,000 in political bribes from Second Mile board members when he was campaigning for governor in 2009, which was the time when he was originally given the Jerry Sandusky case. With this exploitative and callous decision, one can only hope that newly elected Attorney General Kathleen Kane will keep to her promise and investigate Governor Corbett for his role in this case.
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Sean Kitchen is an Assistant Editor and Social Media Organizer for Raging Chicken Press. He is student at Kutztown University.
