However, NCAA Executive Committee chairman and Oregon State president Ed Ray, whose committee was charged by Emmert with designing the sanctions, told ESPN's Adam Rittenberg that while there had been considerable discussion over whether to include a death penalty as one of the sanctions, "the overwhelming position of members of both the executive committee and the Division I board was against a suspension of play." Ray "categorically" denied that Penn State had been threatened with a death penalty had it not agreed to the sanctions, saying that including it as a backup in the event of such a denial was "never even a point of discussion within either the executive committee or the Division I board." Emmert himself told ESPN's Bob Ley that the death penalty was "unequivocally on the table" as a possible sanction. However, he said that the NCAA ultimately decided against imposing one due to Penn State's swift corrective action after the scandal broke in full—including the firing of head coach Joe Paterno and the forced resignation of president Graham Spanier—as well as its full cooperation with the NCAA. "Had Penn State not been as decisive as they were," Emmert said, "I don't know what the outcome would have been, but I suspect it would have been significantly worse." He also denied that the NCAA had threatened Penn State with a death penalty had it not signed the consent decree, saying that there had been "significant confusion" about those circumstances. He did, however, say that had Penn State not accepted the consent decree, the NCAA would have launched a full-blown infractions investigation that would have had "an unknown outcome." Earlier, Emmert told Yahoo! Sports' Pat Forde that if Penn State had not agreed to the sanctions, the board would have taken action on its own, "probably with harsher penalties."