There was no way that PSU was going to challenge any sanctions handed down by the NCAA without looking like enormously insensitive douchebags.
To their credit, the Board of Trustees has acted swiftly and appropriately since the scandal broke last November. They cleaned house, gettiing rid of Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Shultz within five days of Sandusky's arrest, and they commissioned the Freeh report and gave them free reign to perform full fact gathering without limitation or interference. And they accepted the NCAA sanctions without question, despite there being some question as to whether or not it was appropriate for NCAA to even step in at all.
Though I thought that I had heard yesterday that the NCAA did tell PSU that if they did not accept the sanctions, the alternative would have been a four-year death penalty.