I think what cramx3 is referring to is all the hotels, restaurants, and other businesses not affiliated with university that rely on that income.
Vacating the wins is about one thing and one thing only - making someone else the all time wins leader and to remove his name from record books as much as possible. As it stands, it's technically Bowden; but we all know PSU won those games without an unfair competitive advantage. Also, for some reason Bowden gets to count his lower division wins as D-I wins...never understood that one, so I'm not even sure if he should be the all time win leader. Either way, Joepa is now 5th, so it would take a lot of post-career scandels to pop up to put him back in the top 10, let alone #1.
While the athletes can transfer, the damage is already partly done. If they go somewhere else, they are behind the learning curve of the system compared to those who are already there. They have to relocate, which costs money. Not all their credits transfer, so that puts them back academically. So even transferring isn't a clean slate.
The bowl ban hurts the kids who do stay, while in a goofy way saves the athletic department money. Bowl games are huge money sinks because of all the money spent on transportation, housing, and bonuses paid to the coaching staff - and they have to buy any tickets in their allotment not sold, which happens more than you might think. The only way it hurts the program is it gives current players a reason to transfer, and future players a reason to go somewhere else.
Loss of scholarships is designed to prevent the team from being good. It's almost like the NCAA is actively rooting for PSU to go 0-12 the next few years.
The fine I can understand, but I would like to see the NCAA hold off on collecting it until after all the civil suits are paid out. Make sure the victims get first crack at the money.
They found a way to posthumously punish Paterno. They could have slapped a "show-cause" on Spanier, but its not like he'll ever be employed again academia. This was all a very calculated way of trying to ensure that PSU suffers years of losing and replaces Indiana as the football scrapheap of the Big 10. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see the other Big 10 schools make a big push to get Notre Dame to join as a way of pushing PSU out the door since getting ND has always been the prize the B10 wanted, and it allows them to scuttle a school mired in scandal that only makes splashes in football and volleyball athletically.
Just to remind everyone where I stand, I used to have a dog named Joepa who died last year before any of this came to light.