The NCAA's sanctions against Penn State effectively decimate the program's near future. Players are going to flee. Penn State's team will collapse while its rivals become better. And even four seasons from now, when the sanctions end and they can start to rebuild in earnest, Sandusky's atrocities -- and the memory of those who enabled the cover up -- will continue to hang over that program (and Joe Paterno won't be around to try and rebuild the brand).

Ultimately, all of this is good. Strike that. All of this is necessary.

The underlying issue here is that when programs become too huge and cultish -- whether it's Penn State football, UNC basketball, or whatever -- they become chillingly dangerous. Dangerous because a paradigm then exists where there's too much to lose. Almost anything can happen. And when it does, the principals involved are inclined to protect the program first. (If I would have typed that sentence a year ago, it would have read like an unfair and inaccurately dark view of humanity. Today, we know that it's just plain true. If the Penn State football crisis was a sociological experiment, the humans failed.)

As much as the NCAA's ruling is a punishment for Penn State football and what happened on their watch, it's also an acknowledgement that this could have -- and probably would have -- happened at UNC, Kentucky, Ohio, UCLA or anywhere else. So if anyone in a leadership role at a big program is ever faced with a situation like this again, the precedent will now be set: "Yeah, this is gonna hurt the program if we let it go public...but look at the potential alternative."

The NCAA's decision enables people, going forward, to make the right decisions. Sad, perhaps, but necessary.

G.