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JURISPRUDENCE COURT DATE Governor's challenge inspires legal debate Dave Joyner is still hoping for what he calls a "God bomb." What's a God bomb? It's "a really happy thing that happens to you," Joyner said. One of the happier things that could happen to Joyner, Penn State's interim athletic director, would be for the NCAA to repeal or lessen its sanctions against the Nittany Lion football program. And as it happens, a bombshell did recently land at NCAA headquarters. But it didn't come from heaven. It came from Harrisburg. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett filed an antitrust lawsuit Jan. 2 on behalf of the commonwealth, contending that the NCAA overstepped its authority when it punished Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex scandal. Corbett is also petitioning to use the entirety of the NCAA's $60 million fine within Pennsylvania's borders after the NCAA previously announced that 75 percent will be spent outside the state. "They punished past, present and future students, student-athletes, local residents and citizens of Pennsylvania," Corbett said at a news conference at the Nittany Lion Inn. "I found myself asking the question: Why would the NCAA involve themselves in something already being handled in the courts?" The university has nothing to do with the lawsuit, and both Joyner and football coach Bill O'Brien have declined comment on the matter. But legal experts have been quite willing to opine, and while there is disagreement about the viability of certain aspects of Corbett announced the filing of a federal antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA at a Jan. 2 news conference at the Nittany Lion Inn. Although the announcement took place on campus, Penn State is not a party to the lawsuit and was not involved in its preparation. Patrick Mansell the case, many experts seem to believe the sanctions will withstand Corbett's challenge. One sports law expert told the Centre Daily Times that the case probably won't even be heard. Said Geoffrey Rapp of the University of Toledo, "It's a tough sell right now." "The focus of the complaint is on how arbitrary and capricious the [sanctioning] process was," Rapp told the CDT. "They're complaining about the rush to judgment, the process." That will be a difficult argument to make, Rapp said, because a U.S. Supreme Court case from the 1980s established that due process laws do not apply to the NCAA since it is not a state agency. Rapp said he expects the NCAA to file a motion to dismiss the suit. So why is Corbett pursuing a case in which the state may not even have legal standing? Christopher Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, told The Associated Press that the lawsuit "clearly has political ramifications." Since taking office, Corbett has had a strained relationship with Penn State. He sparred with former university president Graham Spanier in 2011 over a proposed 50 percent cut in Penn State's appropriation. And when the NCAA announced its sanctions in July, Corbett called them part of a "corrective process." What's more, many Penn State supporters have criticized the former Pennsylvania attorney general for waiting until after he was elected governor to indict Sandusky. The state took over the Sandusky investigation in early 2009. So with his 2014 re-election campaign drawing near, and with recently elected Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane having pledged to investigate why it took state prosecutors nearly three years to indict Sandusky, the state's lawsuit is set to play out against a political backdrop. On Jan. 10, Kane told the AP she would appoint a special deputy attorney general to look into the state's conduct during the Sandusky investigation. She is the first Democrat to be elected to the office, and the questions she raised during the campaign about the investigation highlight a potential vulnerability in Corbett's bid for re-election. Alternatively, experts have said that a legal victory by the commonwealth would rekindle Corbett's popularity. "Results matter," said Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. "If he's successful in this, I don't know how it doesn't help him." It could also prove to be much more than a political coup. A Villanova sports philosophy professor said the

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