The NCAA vacated Penn State football's wins from 1998 to 2011, effectively revoking Joe Paterno's status as the winningest coach in college football history. Carolyn Kaster/AP

Citing “an athletic culture that went horribly awry,” the National Collegiate Athletic Association fined Penn State University $60 million Monday, and leveled unprecedented punishments on its football program in the latest fallout in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

While the NCAA stopped short of shutting down Penn State’s football program, the university will lose four years of eligibility for postseason play and 10 scholarships a year for four years, penalties that could leave it on the sidelines for many more years.

The NCAA also vacated Penn State football’s wins from 1998 to 2011, effectively revoking Joe Paterno’s status as the winningest coach in college football history.

The announcement Monday from NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis comes less than two weeks after a blistering report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh that found that Paterno and three other top university officials knew for years that Sandusky was molesting boys in a campus football facility, but concealed the abuse from the university and the public.
On Sunday, the university removed a bronze statue of Paterno from the 107,000-seat football stadium, angering students and alumni. Penn State President Rodney Erickson decided the late coach’s name would remain on a university library.

Source: McClatchy News