The decision on Penn State University’s fate after the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal is in, and it isn’t good for the university. It does, however, send a strong and much-needed message to major college sports programs.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association on Monday announced it will fine Penn State $60 million, vacate all of coach Joe Paterno’s victories from 1998-2011, impose a four-year ban on bowl games and enforce the loss of 20 scholarships per year during the next four years.

Some might criticize the penalty as too harsh, since the Sandusky dilemma didn’t directly violate the NCAA’s rules. But we believe that almost all of the penalties were fair, since the NCAA ruled Penn State didn’t have institutional control over the situation. It tells Penn State and other major college programs that earning a lot of money for an institution doesn’t exempt them from not having proper oversight.

A jury last month convicted former assistant coach Sandusky of sexually abusing young boys, sometimes on the campus.

Former FBI director Louis Freeh earlier this month released a report that showed Head Coach Joe Paterno and other university officials swept Sandusky’s actions under the rug. According to the report, Paterno knew as early as 1998 of at least one accusation of inappropriate behavior involving Sandusky and a young boy, but failed to report it to the proper authorities. The report also showed that university officials, including Paterno, didn’t report to the proper authorities an eye-witness account of Sandusky abusing a young boy in the Penn State football showers. Instead, the university allowed Sandusky access to its football facilities, and Paterno went on coaching and winning.

The leaders, the Freeh report said, “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from authorities, the university’s board of trustees, the Penn State community and the public at large.”

While the university avoided the so-called “death penalty,” which would have discontinued the school’s football program, the NCAA’s decision will be detrimental to the school and its athletic department.

The school fired Paterno late last year and he died in January after a short battle with lung cancer. The school was trying to move forward and rebuild a once prestigious program with a new coach, which will be much more difficult to do now that the NCAA is limiting scholarships and bowl appearances. The scholarship loss puts the school at a recruiting disadvantage against other major college football programs and the bowl ban will also prevent top high school talent from enrolling at Penn State.

The football program earns the school nearly $50 million per year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That number will drop considerably, which will affect the school’s other athletic programs that benefit from the football team’s success.

Despite the trickle-down effect, however, the NCAA’s decision needed to be as devastating as it is.

Penn State now joins several power schools that the NCAA has penalized harshly during the past few years. The NCAA hit the University of Southern California with stiff penalties after it ruled that the school improperly paid the family of former Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush. It also penalized The Ohio State University after the NCAA found players had traded memorabilia for cash and tattoos. The penalties resulted in bowl bans and loss of scholarships.

The NCAA, while it has its own problems, did the right thing with Penn State. It’s a difficult lesson that the university will learn, but it shows that major college sports programs, and those universities that benefit heavily from their athletic departments, must abide by the rules and live up to codes of ethics.

We do disagree with removing Paterno’s wins, however. That is mostly symbolic, even though it no longer makes Paterno the all-time Division I-A wins leader. Those wins still exist in the memories and annals of time and vacating them unfairly punishes the young men who sweat and bled to win those games. Paterno is dead, so it no longer matters to him if he won those games or not, but it does matter to the players who were not involved with covering up Sandusky’s heinous crimes.

It will take many years for Penn State to recover from this, but let’s hope the university and other schools learn from the situation and that it discourages future cover-ups.

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Today’s editorial was written by Sports Editor Al Edwards representing the majority opinion of the Journal Tribune Editorial Board. Questions? Comments? Contact Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski by calling 282-1535, Ext. 322, or via email at kristenm@journaltribune.com.