As the country was reacting to Monday’s news of Ray Rice’s cut and indefinite suspension from the NFL, the NCAA ended Penn State’s four-year postseason ban.

It felt like the NCAA took advantage of the Rice situation and said, “We’re going to put this news release out here, hopefully no one realizes what we’ve done, and by Thursday, everyone will be talking about something else.”

Maybe the NCAA was going to release the news on Monday no matter what. Or maybe it licked its lips like a dog spotting a juicy steak, knowing it would avoid the backlash it would ordinarily receive for such a horrible decision.

Both the news, and the way it was announced, left a bad taste in my mouth. It reflects the way the NCAA is run as an organization and has shown how dysfunctional the organization has become.

Penn State is bowl eligible this season after serving only half its four-year postseason suspension. The NCAA also announced that the football program would regain all 85 of its scholarships for next year. The school will still have to pay a $60 million fine,  forfeit 111 wins under Joe Paterno and one win under interim head coach Tom Bradley, and the program will still be monitored.

The decision to reduce the punishment that some called “worse than the death penalty” was a result of the university making progress. According to the NCAA, the university complied with 115 of the 119 recommendations made by former FBI director Louis Freeh.

Some might argue that current Penn State athletes and coaches shouldn’t have to pay the penalty for a crime they weren’t involved in. But that’s the whole point of having the penalty. No penalty on an NCAA program is ever about the people at the school now. It’s always about the people who were there before. 

It’s important to remember why the program received such a steep penalty. All of this was a result of the scandal that broke in 2011 that involved assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who sexually assaulted 10 boys, and top university officials, who either tried to cover up the incident or failed to tell authorities. This wasn’t giving illegal gifts to an athlete or signing unapproved autographs — these were indescribable acts that will forever affect the lives of the victims and their families.

At the time when the penalty was announced, NCAA President Mark Emmert said, “In the Penn State case, the results were perverse and unconscionable. No price the NCAA can levy will repair the grievous damage inflicted by Jerry Sandusky on his victims.” Yet two years later, the NCAA decides that four years is too harsh for the “grievous damage inflicted” to the victims. Two years might seem a long time for many, but for the few whose lives were changed forever, it will never be enough.

Another factor that contributes to my uneasy feeling about the situation is that the NCAA has never gone back to review or revise its punishments on schools. If we want to compare scandals — something that I hate doing — then according to the NCAA, this scandal is the same as the USC football scandal. Both programs were suspended from postseason play for two years, and wins were vacated.

Southern Methodist University received the “death penalty” in 1987, where the NCAA canceled the school’s whole season—SMU canceled its 1988 season as well. The most serious offense that occurred in this scandal was a slush fund for “under the table” payments to players from the mid-1970s through 1986. The program wasn’t able to recover from this penalty for nearly 20 years.

Penn State is the first program to have its punishment ended prematurely. 

The NCAA’s decision puts no fear into programs. If a university only receives a two-year ban for the awful events that occurred, then what’s to prevent teams from violating rules in the future? Nothing. Even if the NCAA catches a school in a rules violation, that school can point to Penn State’s two-year ban as an example of why the NCAA should be lenient.

So yes. I am happy for the students, who will get a chance to celebrate the team Penn State has now. I am happy for the players who chose to stay when they could’ve easily left, and for head coach James Franklin, who has the Nittany Lions heading in the right direction. I am happy for the loyal fans who had to suffer through the mistakes that were made by some administrators. But I am left with a discouraging feeling. An organization that claims to keep order in college sports is instead trying to sneak around behind my back. They hoped I wouldn’t notice.

Michal is a sophomore in Media. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him at @bennythebull94.