NCAA president Mark Emmert handed down Penn State’s punishment for the school’s child sex-abuse scandal and coverup allegations Monday morning in Indianapolis. The punishments were stiff, to say the least. Among them: a $60 million fine and a four-year postseason ban. Read AP story.

The NCAA announced that it will levy “corrective and punitive measures” against Penn State in the wake of the child sex-abuse scandal and coverup allegations, and those measures will be spelled out in a 9 a.m. ET Monday press conference with NCAA President Mark Emmert and Ed Ray, the chairman of the NCAA’s executive committee (read more details here).

The famed statue of Penn State coach Joe Paterno outside the Penn State’s football stadium was taken down and put in storage Sunday morning, and the plaques and letters on the walls behind it are gone, too. Read the full story here and watch all of our video clips from Sunday here, including reaction from BTN’s Howard Griffith and Glen Mason. And be sure to read BTN.com senior writer Tom Dienhart’s column where he says this is clearly the right thing to do.

The NCAA says it will levy “corrective and punitive measures” against Penn State in the wake of the child sex-abuse scandal involving former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. The NCAA announced Sunday that it will detail the sanctions on Monday. It disclosed no details. Read more from The Associated Press. Emmert as recently as last week would not rule out the possibility of shutting down the Penn State football program in the wake of the scandal, adding that he had “never seen anything as egregious.”

It’s a simple mantra that we all should live by: Do the right thing. Joe Paterno didn’t do it. But the decision makers at Penn State are by opting to remove the Paterno statue. Thank you. Oh, the JoePa bootlickers, apologists and loyalists rallied around the statue of their false god, worshiping Paterno in some sort of twisted religious fashion. The sycophants guarded their bronzed deity and laid flowers at its feet, adorning the area around it with signs of support.

BTN aired a live special report Sunday on the removal of the Joe Paterno statue after airing a special report earlier in the morning. Dave Revsine and Gerry DiNardo were in studio, Rick Pizzo was in State College, and they were joined by Tom Dienhart, Glen Mason, and Howard Griffith by phone. Here’s a collection of videos from our Sunday coverage on a day when workers lifted the 7-foot-tall statue off its base and used a forklift to move it into Beaver Stadium as the 100 to 150 students watching chanted, “We are Penn State.”

The family of the late Joe Paterno has issued a statement in reaction to the removal of the statue honoring the former Penn State football coach. The statement read in part: “Tearing down the statue of Joe Paterno does not serve the victims of Jerry Sandusky’s horrible crimes or help heal the Penn State Community. We believe the only way to help the victims is to uncover the full truth.”

Penn State University will remove the famed statue of Joe Paterno outside its football stadium, eliminating a key piece of the iconography surrounding the once-sainted football coach accused of burying child sex abuse allegations against a retired assistant.The university said Sunday that it will take down the larger-than-life monument in the face of an investigative report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh that found the late coach, along with three top Penn State administrators, concealed the abuse claims against Jerry Sandusky more than a decade ago in order to shield the university and its football program from negative publicity.[Tom Dienhart: Remember lessons, not statue]A spokeswoman for the Paterno family did not immediately return phone and email messages Sunday morning. For more, read the full AP story now.Penn State President Rodney Erickson released a statement that reads in part:”I now believe that, contrary to its original intention, Coach Paterno’s statue has become a source of division and an obstacle to healing in our University and beyond. For that reason, I have decided that it is in the best interest of our university and public safety to remove the statue and store it in a secure location. I believe that, were it to remain, the statue will be a recurring wound to the multitude of individuals across the nation and beyond who have been the victims of child abuse.”Visit PSU.edu for the full statement.

BTN aired “Penn State Special Report,” an hour-long show dedicated to the Freeh Report findings Friday night. Dave Revsine hosted the special alongside Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith. The crew offered its thoughts on the findings, and Penn State professor Malcolm Moran, the inaugural Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society, Andy Staples and Pat Forde joined the show. Watch all of our “Penn State Special Report” videos in this post. Plus, read Tom Dienhart’s column, catch up on all the AP stories and read the complete Freeh Report.

There was more reaction to the latest Penn State developments on Friday as a number of people spoke publicly to a variety of outlets. Here’s a look at a few interviews, and we’ll add more as we come across them.

With the release of the Freeh Report and all of its damning revelations yesterday, reaction was swift and blunt.You know how I feel about the whole story. If you missed it, you can read it here. Each weekday I usually post a collection of links and tweets about stories worth a read – you can find my daily posts here. Today’s edition of my daily links focuses on Penn State. Here’s a look at how the Big Ten’s and nation’s leading pundits reacted. And, as you would suspect, it wasn’t pretty.Michael Arace, Columbus Dispatch: Paterno’s legacy is nearly destroyed.Bob Wojnowski, Detroit News: Paterno’s legacy forever stained.Terry Pluto, Cleveland Plain Dealer: NCAA must penalize Penn State football program.Jim Litke, Associated Press: Report takes halo over JoePa’s head and turns it into a noose; truth lies in between.Herb Gould, Chicago Sun-Times: Freeh Report exposes Penn State.David Jones, Harrisburg Patriot-News: It’s time for Joe Paterno’s fans to open their eyes.Jim Carlson, Harrisburg Patriot-News: Penn State’s public image rebuilding will be long, hard road.Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports: Joe Paterno’s new legacy—coach turned his back on helpless boys to protect himself and Sandusky.Gene Wojciechowski, ESPN.com: Paterno empowered a predator.Mark Schlabach, ESPN.com: Penn State deserves the NCAA’s wrath.Stewart Mandel, SI.com: Vile Penn State case a lesson for naïve fans, power programs.Grantland: A failed experiment.Sally Jenkins, Washington Post: Joe Paterno, at the end, showed more interest in his legacy than Jerry Sandusky’s victims.Lisa Olson, AOL Fanhouse: JoePa exposed as Penn State’s cowardly Lion.USA Today: Freeh report blasts culture of Penn State.Mike DeCourcy, Sporting News: Transparency would help college sports avoid Penn State situation.And then there is this from former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, who at one time was engaged in a heated race with Paterno to see who would have the most victories as a Division I coach. Turns out, Bowden thinks that statue of JoePa outside of Beaver Stadium should be torn down. What do you think?And Nebraska A.D. Tom Osborne thinks Penn State’s pain may linger on.Paterno still has his backers. Did you see what former Nittany Lion linebacker and JoePa sycophant Matt Millen was saying yesterday? Needless to say, Millen was ripped and roasted for his comments.TWEETS THAT MATTERhttps://twitter.com/HuskerExtraSip/status/223490331784642562My take: Let that be lesson to all of you.https://twitter.com/MikelSevere/status/223404184744099842My take: No doubt. I have to think many people suspected things about Sandusky long before anything could be proven in the courts.https://twitter.com/brdispatch/status/223477232016961536My take: Eighty-four players on a watch list!!! Eighty-four!!! Not a really exclusive club, huh? This is why watch lists put me to sleep. Names, names, names for trophy after trophy after trophy. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.https://twitter.com/kmeinke/status/223518936078090241My take: I can only hope.BTN.com senior writer Tom Dienhart is on Twitter and Facebook, all of his work is at btn.com/tomdienhart, and you can subscribe to it all via his RSS feed. Also, send questions to his weekly mailbag using the form below.And if you want to leave a comment on this post, use the box below. All comments need to be approved by a moderator.

BTN will air a Penn State Special Report at 9 p.m. ET Friday following Thursday’s release of the Freeh Report as to Penn State’s handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case. Hosted by Dave Revsine, the show will include BTN Analysts Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith in-studio and Glen Mason from Minneapolis, as well as  Malcolm Moran, Penn State professor and the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism, from State College, and others.

Joe Paterno died back in January. Today, his legacy perished. That makes me sad. And it should make you sad, too. Less than a year ago, Paterno was an American icon. He was one brick away from finishing a castle of coaching greatness as he zeroed in on the all-time win record for Division I coaching.

The Big Ten says it will review the child sex-abuse scandal at Penn State and reserve the right to sanction the school depending on what it finds. This would be in addition to NCAA looking into possible rules violations.

The Associated Press reports that former Penn State coach Joe Paterno has a treatable form of lung cancer, according to his son. Scott Paterno said in a statement provided to The Associated Press by a family representative on Friday that the 84-year-old Joe Paterno is undergoing treatment and that “his doctors are optimistic he will make a full recovery.” Read the full story here.