Penn State fans/alumni are having a HAL 9000-type psychotic break:

[exboyfil]

62. Penn State football was not eliminated

I can give you a hypothetical that might apply in this case. Say this happened in a department which receives research dollars from the federal government (or even private research dollars). You might expect those dollars would be pulled if the chief researcher for the grant was shown to be colluding to cover up child rape (which is what happened). Entire research lines are shut down when academic dishonesty is discovered or professors are dismissed even for reasons not related to their research.

Henry Reid, the director of body donations at UCLA was arranging the illegal sale of body parts. No one in the upper administration covered up for him. He was convicted of the crime, and UCLA shut the program down for one year to rewrite procedures to allow more control of the situation. Is this close enough on point for your question. Granted it is small potatoes when compared to PSU football whose cover up started with the assistant coaches and went all the way to the President of the university.

The only thing I would change about the judgement would be to give an equal number of full ride scholarships (without the football benefits just vanilla scholarships) to academic All Americans who will not play football in college. That would cover up any argument that students are hurt by the scandal. These academically deserving individuals will get an opportunity for a Penn State education that they would not get otherwise.