Penn State's Vacated Victories

On Monday, the NCAA made what can only be described as a strange decision. It determined that all of Penn State's on-field victories from 1998 until 2012 were to be erased, or 'vacated', thus stripping Joe Paterno of his coaching record. Gary Alan Fine senses an Orwellian kind of madness to the decision, the kind that only comes when someone attempts to edit history:

The more significant question is whether rewriting history is the proper answer. And while this is not the first time that game outcomes have been vacated, changing 14 seasons of football history is a unique and disquieting response. We learn bad things about people all the time, but should we change our history? Should we, like Orwell’s totalitarian Oceania, have a Ministry of Truth that has the authority to scrub the past? Should our newspapers have to change their back files? And how far should we go? Should we review Babe Ruth’s records? Or O. J. Simpson’s? Should a disgraced senator have her votes vacated? Perhaps we should claim that Joe McCarthy actually lost his elections. Or give victory to John Edwards’s opponent?

Previous coverage of Penn State here.

(Image: "The now empty Joe Paterno statue site outside Beaver Stadium at Penn State University in State College. The university announced Sunday that it was taking down the monument." Paul Chaplin, via The Patriot-News)