MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world.

MR. KOJO NNAMDILater in the broadcast, the art of artisan pops and other frozen treats. It's food Wednesday. But first, the NCAA delivers swift punishment against Penn State's football program. It's impossible to erase history, but the institutions of college football are sure trying their best. One month after former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual assault, the university and the NCAA are scrubbing the campus and the record books.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIFirst, Penn State took action under the cover of night, removing an iconic campus statue of Joe Paterno, the legendary head coach who willfully covered up this scandal. Then this Monday the NCAA announced plans to rewrite the box scores for more than a decade of Nittany Lions football, vacating all victories between 1998 and 2011 as part of an unprecedented group of sanctions against Penn State.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIWe're joined in studio by Dave Zirin. He is sports editor of The Nation and author of "The John Carlos Story" and the other book, "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports." Dave Zirin, good to see you.

MR. DAVID ZIRINGreat to be here, Kojo.

NNAMDIJoining us by phone is Gary Alan Fine. He's a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, whose research focuses on understanding historical figures with difficult and conflicting reputations, such as Joseph McCarthy. His op-ed, "George Orwell and the NCAA" appears in today's edition of The New York Times. Gary Alan Fine, thank you for joining us.

MR. GARY ALAN FINEThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIA month ago former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky convicted of 45 counts of child sexual assault. Two weeks ago an independent report by former FBI director Louis Free found that Penn State officials knew about the allegations, failed to take actions to prevent abuse. By all accounts, the punishments announced by the NCAA are both swift and historic, $60million fine, which will go to prevent child abuse and assist child victims, a ban on bowl appearances for the next four years and a reduction in athletic scholarships. And the victories from 1998 to 2011 have been wiped out, taken off the record books. Dave Zirin, was this, in your view, the right decision?

ZIRINNo. I didn't think it was the right decision at all. And let me say before I pass any sort of judgment on what the NCAA did, I think we all agree that there is no penalty too great that Penn State could pay for what it appears that they did, which is put the interests of the football program and the interests of the brand of the school ahead of the interest of protecting children. That's monstrous. And we all, I think, should agree on that.

ZIRINBut what the NCAA did was they intervened in what is a civil and criminal matter. The NCAA, which is a private company, it is a private non-profit with a president, Mark Emmert, who makes $1.6 million a year. He's got 14 vice presidents, each of whom make $400,000 a year. They used the Louis Free report as their investigation -- even though the Louis Free report was commissioned privately by the Penn State Board of Trustees -- and said, we now know all we need to know. And therefore, we now know enough to punish.

ZIRINNow, how did they really punish the school? Well, they took scholarships away from a lot of people who were four years old when Jerry Sandusky retired. They took $60 million, as you said, from the school to give to children's charities. Let's look at that for a second. Penn State is a public college. The NCAA is a private institution. They took $60 million out of a public school to give to children's charities. We don't even know what these charities are, how they're gonna be dispersed or where it's gonna go.

ZIRINAnd that's my last reason why I don't like this, is that it is so unprecedented. This is the first time the NCAA has ever intervened directly in a criminal or civil manner. And it's just not an appropriate function for this body.

NNAMDIA quick follow-up, when NCAA President Mark Emmert announced the punishments he criticized the culture of hero warship surrounding the football program. What is your view of how we best need to address that culture? Because it's coming from the head of the NCAA and from what you just said about the head of the NCAA, the money he makes, the money his assistants make, the charges seem to ring hollow.

ZIRINThey do because that culture of reverence that he describes -- and the other thing that Mark Emmert said, he said the problem is with football programs that are, "too big to fail." And I agree with him about that. And so then you, by all costs, you try to protect these programs, even as we saw horrifyingly, at the expense of the lives of children. But this culture of reverence is exactly what has built up the NCAA into the kind of monolith that it is. Negotiating $11 billion TV contracts and having an office that might as well have Trump on it. It looks like the Taj Mahal.

NNAMDIBut aren't we, the fans, in part responsible for this culture of reverence, if in fact the factors of supply and demand in the capitalist system work? The fact is that we're the ones who pay for these sports. We're the ones who pay for all of the knick-knacks that our favorite teams offer, all of the jerseys and everything else that they offer.

ZIRINYeah.

NNAMDIAren't we in part to blame?

ZIRINYeah, and that's exactly why I think that one of the solutions we have to look at closely is the idea of eliminating this idea of sham amateurism at the college level. I mean, the idea that our institutions of higher learning are the minor leagues for the National Football League or the National Basketball Association is very problematic. It distorts higher education. We're the only country in the world that operates this way. And I think it's worth a massive step back and reassessment, as to our priorities with regards to amateur athletics.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is the number to call if you'd like to join the conversation. Do you see a problem with hero warship in American sports? Do we need to reprogram American sports culture? And how would you suggest we do that? 800-433-8850. You can send us a tweet @kojoshow, email to kojo@wamu.org or go to our website, kojoshow.org and join the conversation there. We're talking with Dave Zirin. He is sports editor of The Nation and author of the book, "The John Carlos Story," and the book, "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports."

NNAMDIJoining us by phone is Gary Alan Fine. He's a professor of sociology at Northwestern University. His op-ed, "George Orwell and the NCAA," appears in today's New York Times. Gary Alan Fine, up until Monday Joe Paterno was the winningest coach in Division I football history, but the sanctions included a decision to vacate all 112 Penn State victories between 1998 and 2011. The idea of scrubbing the history books struck many people as being somewhat problematic.

NNAMDIThe piece you wrote in The New York Times today argues that this was a flourish worthy of George Orwell. How have you been viewing that?

FINEWell, I think that the issue of the culture of reverence is very important, but so is the importance of historical memory. And what the NCAA has decided to do is to deny the students, the players who participated in these games, the historical effects, the history of their success. You know, I think it's very right to say that Joe Paterno's concern was protecting an institution that was too big to fail. And no one is suggesting that Joe Paterno was, you know, I'm sure he was as upset by the child abuse as anyone would be, but he felt that it was more important to protect his brand, to protect the football program at Penn State University.

FINEAnd so he chose to look the other way. And that is part of this culture of reverence that we're talking about. Now, recognizing that, the question is who should be punished and how should that punishment take place? Should it be the kids, the football players that is, who were out there on Saturdays and who won these games over 14 years? Or should we pretend that those victories never happened?

NNAMDIHow does that…

FINEAnd that's…

NNAMDI…in your view compare to how we look at other flawed historical figures?

FINEWell, I think that we always have to balance the good and the bad in every individual. You know, I used the example in the op-ed of O.J. Simpson, you know. What should we do with O.J.'s records on the field? We can also extend this to politicians. Take the case, an important case, of Martin Luther King, a great man, did important things, essential things for American history. And yet, also he had flaws in his character. He plagiarized, apparently, in his doctoral dissertation.

FINEWell, how do we weigh the good and the bad in Reverend King's legacy, Joe Paterno's legacy, Joe McCarthy's legacy, O.J.'s legacy, all the rest of these flawed people who may be successful in some domains and weak, improper in others?

NNAMDIDave Zirin, sports records are something that we hold sacred. They are the yardsticks by which we judge one era to another, one player or coach to another. It's one thing to reevaluate a sports figure as a person.

ZIRINRight.

NNAMDIIt's another thing to start changing their records, isn't it?

ZIRINRight. And that's something the NCAA is very alone on the sports landscape in doing. They've also -- remember the Fab Five team of Michigan in the early '90s, was led by Chris Webber. They went two straight Final Fours except they didn't. If you go and look at the NCAA record books they have been stricken. The banners have been taken down from the rafters where the Michigan Wolverines play basketball. It's as if it didn't happen. And that to me is very disturbing. I mean it speaks to something almost Stalinist in nature.

ZIRINLike, there'll be no more pictures of Leon Trotsky in the USSR. He didn't exist. Instead of actually reckoning with it. And this relates to the Paterno case in a strong way because you think about them taking the statue down over the weekend, the statue of Joe Paterno. I would argue that one of the problems at Penn State was the fact that there was a statue built in the first place and that you have this coach named Joe Paterno, just a flesh-and-blood man like you and me, who gets to pass a statue of himself on the way to work on a daily basis. No wonder he felt like he was too big to fail.

ZIRINAnd yet by taking it down, you also take down the fact that there was this kind of hysteria built around his cult of personality. Why not instead keep the statue up, yet put a plaque next to it talking about his crime so people can -- or move the statue to a museum that actually discusses what took place at Penn State. Use it as a teachable moment instead of erasing it because, not to be hacky on your show, Kojo, but it's the old expression, if we don't remember history we're condemned to repeat it.

NNAMDIOnto the telephones now. We will start with Jesse in Herndon, Va. Jesse, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JESSEYeah, my father-in-law is a department head at Penn State. He was telling us a story a little while ago that, I guess, one year they had the first football game the same weekend as freshman move-in. And as a result, the stadiums were much more empty than usual. And he apparently had a fit about this and insisted to the academic department that they move the academic year up a week so that his stands were full. And the academia bowed to it. And lo and behold, they moved it.

JESSEAnd I think what we need to remember here is that football is supposed to be sort of secondary. It's an extracurricular activity.

NNAMDIUm-hum.

JESSEAnd learning is really the primary focus. And as a alumni, while I’m upset as to what's happened, I don’t necessarily think that the punishments were out of line, but, you know, as long as they let the players move somewhere else. And the thing that really upset me is the fact that, you know, that the pensions were left in -- well, particularly Sandusky's pension is left in place, you know, even though while he was there he abused his authority. So I'll take it off the air after that.

NNAMDIDave Zirin?

ZIRINWell, now with Sandusky, let's remember also received a $169,000 payout upon his retirement. That was his settlement. I would just point out one thing to the caller, and I know this is a very difficult time at Penn State. But one of the things that the NCAA said, as the caller referenced, was that players now have the right to leave Penn State and matriculate and get scholarships at any other school. And that sounds very noblesse oblige of the head of the NCAA. Yet there's a problem with that.

ZIRINI mean, they're not expanding the scholarships at other schools. So if they are able to go somewhere, that's somebody else who's going to lose their scholarship. So this is not the case that they've somehow been liberated from Penn State. All they've done is push the problem under the rug.

NNAMDIJesse, thank you very much for your call. Gary Alan Fine, in your piece, you write about a sports scandal at Northwestern University involving a player who gambled on school games. Apparently in that case the school considered but ultimately backed away from scrubbing individual records.

FINEI think it's a very difficult issue because large institutions don't want to remember a difficult past. And they believe that the easiest way of forgetting that past is to erase it. And we see this in a lot of different domains. And I think Dave is absolutely right about the important of making this a teachable moment. You know, I would not be in favor of melting down the statue of Joe Paterno, but rather moving it to a particular location, a museum or some other site in which Penn State students remember both the victories -- the success of their football team and the crimes, if they turn out to be crimes, of the administrators, including Joe Paterno and their past president.

NNAMDIHere is Andy...

FINEAnd I think that balance is important.

NNAMDI...here's Andy in Potomac, Md. Andy, your turn.

ANDYHi, Kojo. Thanks for taking my call. Very interesting. You know, I agree with some of the points that your guests have made and I disagree with others. Recently, one of the guys said that it was almost Stalinist to sort of erase these victories. And I agree with that. That's kind of weird in a way. I mean, it happened and Penn State won and that's okay. But I think there's -- you know, I think you're missing the forest through the trees here. You know, the same guy said, well, we can't rely on the Louis Freeh report to go ahead and punish these people. We rushed to judgment.

ANDYListen, man, you know, we know enough -- we know enough about what happened to put the hammer down. And let's talk about what happened and let's make a moral judgment here. What's more important, football, branding hundreds of millions of dollars or the molestation of little boys? Come on.

NNAMDIChildren. All right. The most important resource that we have. It's the most important thing in our lives. But here's Dave Zirin.

ZIRINYeah, 'cause that's not exactly what I said. I think the free report shows certainly a preponderance of evidence that people in power knew this. And that was the first thing I said when we started this interview, that we can say for sure that there were people in power -- we know this from the emails -- who knew about Sandusky's activities, his illegal disgusting activities as early as 1998 and chose to do nothing because of concern for the football team. I hear that.

ZIRINBut then I would follow that up by saying that's why we have criminal and civil courts in this country. And what I am concerned about -- and this is where I would respectfully say I don't think you're seeing the forest for the trees. I am concerned about the idea that we privatize these functions that should be civic and public functions. The same thing -- like, I'm not a fan of prisons...

NNAMDIBecause the NCAA is a private organization.

ZIRIN...a private organization that has passed judgment on a criminal matter and harmed a school in the process. And that really sits wrong with me. Like for example, I'm not a fan of prisons, Kojo. Yet at the same time, I would protest against the privatization of prisons. And you see the distinction. And this is -- like this isn't to say that yeah, the U.S. courts always get everything right. I'm not arguing that.

NNAMDISo you are saying if the criminal justice system were to impose similar penalties -- well, not necessarily race and games, but similar penalties or harsh penalties, if you will, against Penn State, you wouldn't have a problem with that.

ZIRINZero point zero would I have a problem with that. No problem whatsoever. It's about what functions we trust to carry out these activities.

NNAMDIWhat institutions...

ZIRINWhat institutions -- I'm sorry, what institutions we trust to carry out these activities.

FINEAnd the courts are likely to do just that through the criminal procedure and the civil procedure. The problem is the NCAA didn't even follow their own procedures...

ZIRINThat's true.

FINE...for making this decision. They didn't go through the proper committee.

NNAMDIHere is Chris in Bethesda, Md. Chris, your turn.

CHRISHi. Thanks for taking my call. I have a really quick question. It's concerning this notion of the NCAA being a private organization. And it's also a voluntary organization and so in reality, Penn State doesn't have to pay, do they? I mean, because by joining the NCAA, they're acceding their authority and they need to abide by its bylaws. They could join another organization, the NAIA or there's other intercollegiate organizations they could join and bypass all of these restrictions. But by voluntarily joining the NCAA, they agree to these bylaws. Isn't that correct?

NNAMDIDave Zirin.

ZIRINYeah, the problem with that -- and I have heard that from other folks before -- is that the NCAA is actually much better described as a cartel. I mean, you are right that it is a voluntary organization. Yet at the same time, if you hope to make anything other than peanuts and crackerjacks off of your football program, it's the NCAA or nowhere. And Penn State was actually given the option in this case. We hear from insider reports where it's like, okay, either accept this punishment or we will ban your football program from the NCAA. And that was the main goal of the board of trustees.

ZIRINAnd frankly, it's one of the reasons why I think the board of trustees should resign is that -- en mass -- already one member has. But it's like their main goal was, okay, even if it takes five years, ten years, twenty years, at some point the goal has to be get Penn State football back on the gravy train.

NNAMDIDave Zirin. He is sports editor of The Nation and author of the books "The John Carlos Story" and "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports." Dave Zirin, thank you for joining us.

ZIRINMy privilege, Kojo.

NNAMDIGary Alan Fine is a professor of sociology at Northwestern University. He focuses on understanding historical figures with difficult and conflicting reputations, such as Joseph McCarthy and, I guess now, Joe Paterno. His op-ed "George Orwell and the NCA" appears in today's edition of the New York Times. Gary Alan Fine, thank you for joining us.

FINEThank you very much, Kojo.

NNAMDIWe're gonna take a short break. When we come back, the art of artisan pops and other frozen treats. It's Food Wednesday. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.