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In a dramatic show of support for their old coach, more than 300 former Penn State football players are now publicly backing the Paterno family's lawsuit against the NCAA. Former Nittany Lion Brian Masella released a letter on Monday demanding due process and the truth. "We're glad we're able to show these guys – the Penn State alumni, the student and the trustees willing to step forward that we're behind them 100 percent," Masella tells Statecollege.com. "We want to show them they're not standing there alone, all by themselves, on a cliff." On May 29, the Paterno family, along with...

Bob Costas said last month he had "some responsibility to follow the story" of the Freeh report and the Paterno family's rebuttal. He will push that story forward on "Costas Tonight" at 11 p.m. on NBC Sports Network, according to network spokesman Adam Freifeld. The start of the show could be delayed if Game 7 of the NHL's Western Conference semifinals were to run late. Among the guests on the show are Paterno family attorney Wick Sollers, former Pennsylvania Gov. Dick Thornburgh and Paterno family spokesman Dan McGinn. The three men will announce on the show a new lawsuit against...

From page 6: We are left with unprecedented penalties based on disputed facts. The Penn State sanctions are based upon a Consent Decree that is disputed by the accused individuals. The three key administrators are facing criminal charges and have not had an opportunity to fully respond to the Freeh Report that serves as the basis for the penalty. The full account of what occurred at Penn State University has not been told and the sanctions seem premature. As such, NCAA sanctions currently levied against Penn State should be suspended until the perjury and child endangerment cases have been completed....

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By Mike Dawson — mdawson@centredaily.com UNIVERSITY PARK — The candidates endorsed by the grass-roots group Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship won the three seats on the university’s board of trustees, unseating the two incumbents who include local surgeon Paul Suhey. Barbara Doran, William “Bill” Oldsey and Edward “Ted” Brown won in what was a runaway election, and Suhey, the first candidate out, finished a distant fourth. The other incumbent to lose was Stephanie Deviney, a Chester County lawyer. Doran received 15,085 votes; Oldsey got 13,940; and Brown got 11,403. Here’s the full list with the results. The election results, released...

MANDEVILLE — This is the weekend Michael Mauti has been looking forward to since he first put on a football uniform — maybe even before. And if it’s happening a year, maybe two, later than the former Penn State linebacker figured, well, life seldom goes as planned, especially considering the turmoil surrounding the Nittany Lions in the past two seasons. “You can’t always control what happens to you,” said Mauti, who’ll be watching this week’s NFL draft with his family in Mandeville — including his father, ex-Saints receiver Rich Mauti. “And it’s been a roller coaster for me. I’m hoping...

When thousands of Penn State alumni members woke up Wednesday morning, they would have found an email directing them to vote in the alumni trustee election. They will find, if they missed the billboards, election signs or ads, they can select up to three candidates from a crowded field of 39. Among them: lawyers, accountants, a few of the twentysomething crowd, a bunch who ran last year and some newcomers this year. Wednesday started the first day for voting in the highly competitive and much-anticipated race, and alumni can vote as late as the morning of May 2. Voting is...

The Nevin Shapiro-Miami-NCAA controversy has created a new storyline in the NCAA sanctions of Penn State, with a fired NCAA investigator proclaiming the NCAA didn't impose anything against the university and that Penn State president Rodney Erickson "sold the school down the river." Earlier today, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel posted information about several emails between former NCAA investigator Ameen Najjar and Shapiro included in the bankruptcy case of Shapiro, the man imprisoned for a Ponzi scheme and charged by the NCAA with providing illicit benefits to University of Miami athletes. Amongst details about the NCAA's investigation of Shapiro was one...

Finally, someone lets John speak.

Cornell’s Dake puts 76-match win streak on the line Saturday Roger Moore, NCAA.com DES MOINES, Iowa – It is the unstoppable force against the immovable object. A Ferrari versus a Mack truck. A thoroughbred and a Clydesdale. David Taylor and Kyle Dake. Since word spread Dake, a three-time NCAA champion for Cornell, was moving up to a fourth weight class for the fourth year, the chatter from California to New York has been about 165 pounds. Dake, an Ithaca, N.Y., native, has won 76 consecutive matches and is trying to add his name to yet another column of the NCAA...

DES MOINES, Iowa—Penn State has all but clinched a third straight national title. All that's left for the powerhouse Nittany Lions is for David Taylor to defend the title that Cornell's Kyle Dake has worked so hard to take. Penn State had 114.5 points and a commanding 20.5-point lead over Oklahoma State heading into Saturday's finals of the NCAA championships. Minnesota is third in the team race with 86 points, followed by Iowa with 68. The Nittany Lions also have five wrestlers set to compete for a title, including a surging Taylor. He and Dake—who is one win away from...

“Do you see the Freeh report differently now than you did at the time?” “Oh yes, very much so.” Those words came from Emmy-winning journalist Bob Costas last week in a radio interview with Kevin Slaten of KQQZ in St. Louis. Costas spoke at length to Slaten about his evolving opinion of the Freeh report, Joe Paterno’s legacy, and the Penn State situation as a whole in what is some of the most balanced rhetoric I’ve heard from a national media source about the Sandusky scandal. Costas has been on top of this story from the start, most notably in...

STATE COLLEGE — Penn State trustee Paul Suhey admits relieving Joe Paterno of his head coaching duties in November 2011 over a late-night phone call was not the right tact. Stephanie Deviney, another trustee, is certain the whole board feels that way. “We apologize, we screwed it up as far as how we delivered the message,” Suhey said Friday in an interview. “Our decision, we’re not going to go back on. But we messed that up big time. “People are still so hurt by that, and you know, damn it, we screwed it up.” The Paterno decision will go down...

Another incredible Big Ten wrestling team title race was won by another incredible final-day finish by Penn State. Boasting four champions and 10 NCAA qualifiers, the Nittany Lions outscored a charging Minnesota team and a sagging Iowa squad to win their third straight Big Ten crown. Penn State tallied 151 points to Minnesota’s 139 and Iowa’s 130.5. David Taylor at 165 and Ed Ruth at 184 became three-time Big Ten champs, the third and fourth Nittany Lions ever to do so. And Penn State will take all 10 wrestlers to the NCAAs for the first time in 16 years. Penn...

ATLANTIC CITY – The Penn State seniors and Bill O'Brien took part in a star-studded awards gala Friday evening. Gone were the uniforms, ball caps and sweatshirts. Forget the sneakers and shorts which were traded in for tuxedos, bow ties and freshly-pressed suits. O'Brien and the senior class both received loud ovations from the crowd inside the Maxwell Football Club's awards gala. Bill O'Brien was honored as the Maxwell Football Club's Collegiate Coach of the Year during Friday's national awards gala and the senior class was also honored with the Brookshire Spirit Award. The award was accepted on behalf of...

PSU Students curing pediatric cancer. They've been on their feet since Friday at 4pm and are into their last hour - and then it starts all over again for 2014. Go Go Gadjet playing now. Reveal to come at 4PM. Hoping for $12million. You can watch live at thon.org also trend #thon on twitter

One of Pennsylvania's most prominent citizens has been part of the Paterno family's efforts to clear the late Joe Paterno of responsibility for the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal at Penn State. The Paterno family is set to release its rebuttal to the Freeh Report on Sunday morning, starting with an appearance by the authors of their counter-attack on the ESPN news magazine show, "Outside the Lines." Former Gov. Dick Thornburgh will be prominent on that panel, giving it heft as a former U.S. Attorney General under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Thornburgh's involvement in the Paterno's...

Lehigh Valley Congressman Charlie Dent said Penn State's culture is not to blame for Jerry Sandusky's decades of child sexual abuse, according to a review of the university's internal investigation by Joe Paterno's family. Dent, in a telephone interview Friday, said he had read summaries of the review commissioned by the late head football coach's family. The review is set to be published Sunday morning. "To blame the culture of Penn State for Sandusky's crimes is a horrible mistake," Dent said Friday, characterizing the findings of one of the experts commissioned by the Paterno family. "To blame the culture of...

FORK UNION, Va. -- At a small table inside the Estes Athletic Center on the Fork Union Military campus, with teammates and family surrounding him, Christian Hackenberg signed the letter of intent that would bind his fate with the Penn State football program's for the next few years. He officially became a Nittany Lion at 8:50 a.m. Wednesday. And he told me he was anxious to talk with PSU head football coach Bill O'Brien and quarterbacks coach Charlie Fisher Wednesday evening. Hackenberg, who spent three years at Fork Union Military Academy, was all smiles after he signed. He looked relieved....

Joe Paterno's widow is to give her first interview since the Jerry Sandusky scandal and her husband's subsequent death, appearing on Katie Couric's daytime talk show in an episode scheduled to air Monday. Sue Paterno, who was married to the legendary Penn State football coach for 50 years, is scheduled to talk with Couric in studio for the nationally syndicated show "Katie." The two have already gotten together at Paterno's home in State College, Pa. Joe Paterno was head coach of the Nittany Lions for almost as long as he was married, from 1966 into 2011. He led the team...

Franco Harris doesn't believe the NCAA sanctions against Penn State will stand, nor is he convinced that the trials of former Penn State officials will occur. Further, the former Penn State running back said, he sees opinions shifting about his alma mater's role in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. "The narrative is starting to change," Harris said Friday. "The [grand jury] presentment and the Freeh Report are falling apart. The NCAA [sanctions], that will fall apart. There will be no trials for [Tim] Curley and [Gary] Schultz. There's no case. We're starting to find the truth." More than 200 turned...

Amid sanctions, Penn State's seniors salvaged season By Scott Brown Published: Saturday, January 5, 2013, 11:55 p.m. Updated 15 hours ago Coach Bill O‘Brien often can‘t say enough about the role Penn State‘s seniors played in leading the Nittany Lions to an improbable 8-4 record this past season. But two key words offer the simplest explanation of why this senior class will go down as perhaps the most important in Penn State football history: “Charlie Mike.” That is military shorthand for the initials C.M., which stand for “Continue Mission.” Following an inspirational speech from a former Nittany Lion and Navy...

By GIL SPENCER gspencer@delcotimes.com So finally someone in a position of authority in this state is standing up to the late-hitters and pile jumpers that used the Penn State scandal for their own shameful and hypocritical purposes. That someone is Gov. Tom Corbett, who has finally filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its publicity-whore President Mark Emmert. Better late than never. Last summer, Emmert declared PSU in violation of the NCAA’s regulations without citing a single concrete NCAA rule that the school had broken and imposed crippling sanctions on its storied football program — including a...

By Adam Lidgett Collegian Staff Writer The three former Penn State administrators charged with perjury in relation to the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case have all filed motions referencing the way a former university attorney testified against them to the grand jury — and some legal experts are saying the case is tainted because of it. Both former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and former Interim Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz have filed to have their Dec. 13 preliminary hearing postponed. Both men say they believed former university counsel Cynthia Baldwin was representing them...

Much has been written, and will be written, about the tremendous job Coach Bill O'Brien did in guiding Penn State's football team, the university and all of Nittany Nation this season and it will all be well deserved. Similarly, Michael Mauti, Michael Zordich, Matt McGloin and others will be lauded as the embodiment of leadership and excellence and, like the accolades given to O'Brien, it will be well deserved. However, there is another person to whom we owe a bit of gratitude for the great season that was 2012 and that is the late Joe Paterno. When recruiting young...

Video link to an interview w/ Costas and Franco Harris. They also did another interview at the same link on the Immaculate Reception. Franco tells it like it is. Costas has softened on Joe because he actually read the freeh report. Good interview and good representation from Franco (who is not known for his public speaking).

John Ziegler (Media Malpractice) released a half hour preview of his upcoming documentary - The Framing of Joe Paterno today.

For the Uninitiated: The Biggest Media Myths of the Jerry Sandusky Scandal Since details don’t seem to really matter anymore, here is the "Cliffs Notes" version of how the media created a false narrative (which they refuse to correct) in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. You might think of this as "Why Nearly Everything You Think You Know About the Penn State Story is False." Please feel free to share it as a resource with those whose minds you are trying to open about what really happened here. In the basic order in which they occurred, these are the biggest media-created...

<p>Penn State football fans will no longer be singing "Sweet Caroline" while cheering on their Nittany Lions, according to university officials.</p> <p>Neil Diamond's classic song, often sung at sporting events and particularly at Boston Red Sox baseball games, has been rotated out of the playlist for Beaver Stadium this year.</p>

Stints in jail. Hefty fines and restitution. Clouded futures. The consequences of their bad behavior have been steep for the Penn State students who took to the streets and rioted in the chaotic aftermath of Hall of Fame coach Joe Paterno's firing last November. Perhaps none have learned a harder lesson than Justin Strine, a young man from central Pennsylvania whose planned career as an Army officer is over before it began — the casualty of his own split-second decision to put his hands on a news van, and a judicial system that considered him as guilty as classmates who...

I just finished the book, “Paterno” by Joe Posnanski. I was fortunate enough to have the back cover photograph. My Friend Joe Hermitt had the front. Between the two of us we probably photographed JoePa more than anyone. I read over half the book on a bench in Sunset Park, not more than 100 yards from the Paterno home. Why? I am not sure why. I wanted a quiet place to read and reflect on this man that I knew all these years. This seemed like the right place. I spent many cold hours in front of his house...

Attorneys for former Penn State administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz released a statement Wednesday backing former Penn State President Graham Spanier's attorneys' denouncement of the Freeh report earlier in the day. Spanier, who has not been criminally charged in connection to the alleged concealment of Jerry Sandusky's sex crimes, spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday since his contract was terminated by Penn State's Board of Trustees in November. Over the past month, he spoke with The New Yorker's Jeffery Toobin, who's interview with Spanier was published Wednesday. Later, he spoke with ABC's Josh Elliott which aired in part...

Ray Blehar is a long time DC investigator and points out some truths about the freeh report. Yeah, he's a PSU MBA, but very sharp and this is his business. He actually comes to accuse someone working on that report of altering and/or forging e-mails (He's referring to exhibits 2A, C, and D I believe). He also has some not so complimentary comments about freeh and his career. He basically pins this on the State, for their coverup of 1998 and says it was reinforced within the Penn State B.O.T. through Ken Frazier (Merck attorney) and a lot of the...

Outspoken proponents of homosexuality – such as those who attack the CEO of Chick-fil-A for expressing his Christian faith – are remarkably quiet on the issue of former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and the culture that helped foster his abuse of young boys, according to observers. Are the activists intentionally staying low-key regarding the sexual abuse inflicted by the convicted PSU boy predator, or has their campaign just been too busy to take a strong stand on the matter? Michael L. Brown, host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show “Line of Fire,” throws all his chips in...

President Obama said Thursday that the New York Jets quarterback situation would make him "pretty nervous" if he were a fan of the team. The Jets acquired Denver phenom Tim Tebow in the off-season, but are playing him as a backup to Mark Sanchez. "I've got to tell you, I don't like the idea of a quarterback controversy at the start of the season," Obama said on Columbus' 97.1 The Fan in a Thursday call-in appearance on The Common Man & The Torg's radio program. (Also on POLITICO: NY Jets brush off Obama critique) "If I was a Jets fan,...

It is Corbett himself who is most guilty of hesitating. Hesitating as then-attorney general to appropriately staff the Jerry Sandusky investigation, and hesitating for years to make an arrest, both of which jeopardized children. That hesitation, and Corbett’s stonewalling, has created an intense firestorm.

In yet another shocking development in the Penn State story, ousted president Graham Spanier will soon begin working with the federal government on projects related to national security, The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., first reported. In an email written to the paper, Spanier said: “For the next several months, as I transition to my post-presidential plans, I will be working on a special project for the U.S. government relating (to) national security.

New B.O.T. member takes on the freeh report and the media in general. Also addresses how weak and rudderless PSU became after Joe and spanier were gone, and how that allowed the media to frame the narrative. Listen, if you want the truth.

What a fool I was. In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno. It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue. "Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said. "What's hagiography?" I asked. "The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him....

UNIVERSITY PARK — Penn State’s 2013 recruiting class lost one of its commitments on Saturday. New Jersey defensive lineman Greg Webb withdrew his oral pledge to attend Penn State in favor of North Carolina. UNC recruiting sites reported Friday that Webb had reopened his recruiting and planned to visit the Tar Heels’ Chapel Hill campus on Saturday. Webb — a 6-foot-1, 295-pound defensive tackle at Timber Creek High School in Sicklerville, N.J. — indeed visited UNC and committed when his high school teammate Dajuan Drennon also committed to the Tar Heels. A four-star recruit by Rivals.com standards, Webb was one...

Penn State president orders Paterno statue removalAssociated Press – 4 mins 2 secs ago STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Penn State University will remove the famed statue of Joe Paterno outside its football stadium, eliminating a key piece of the iconography surrounding the once-sainted football coach accused of burying child sex abuse allegations against a retired assistant. The university said Sunday that it will take down the larger-than-life monument in the face of an investigative report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh that found the late coach, along with three top Penn State administrators, concealed the abuse claims against Jerry...

(CNN) -- Vicky Triponey knows all too well the power Penn State's late football coach, Joe Paterno, held for more than half a century over the insular slice of central Pennsylvania that calls itself Happy Valley. She experienced firsthand the clubby, jock-snapping culture, the sense of entitlement, the cloistered existence. It's what drove her five years ago from her job as the vice president who oversaw student discipline. She was told she was too aggressive, too confrontational, that she wasn't fitting in with "the Penn State way." She clashed often with Paterno over who should discipline football players when they...

They want us to believe Joe Paterno and his title-heavy minions — university president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and senior vice president Gary Schultz — didn’t fully grasp the depravity of Jerry Sandusky’s perversion. They, Paterno’s remaining apologists, want us to believe JoePa’s and Penn State’s sin had more to do with naivete than vanity. They’re delusional and think we’re stupid.

After a lengthy investigation into years of sexual abuse within the Penn State football program, former FBI director Louis Freeh released a report of his findings today. We're still thumbing through it. It's withering. Here's what we've learned so far: Joe Paterno Knew In 1998 Paterno Gave Jerry Sandusky The Option To Keep Coaching "As Long As He Was The Coach" Paterno Family Statement Blames Everyone But Joe Paterno, Who Is To Blame In 1998, Jerry Sandusky Told State Officials And University Police That "He Had Done This With Other Children In The Past" Janitors Didn't Report Jerry Sandusky's 2000...

I have to say, I’m disappointed and a little concerned by the reaction of some of my freeper friends to the Sandusky / Penn State scandal. Full disclosure: I graduated from PSU in 1970. Am not a member of the Alumni Association, have been back for, maybe, 5 games since 1970. Very much on the periphery of all things Penn State. For the class of ‘70, the JoPa phenomenon (“JoPa” hadn’t even been coined, yet.) hadn’t materialized. Nevertheless, living in Pennsylvania, one could hardly be oblivious to the success of the football team or Paterno’s philosophy. We were happy to...

The independent report by Louis Freeh and his law firm, Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP, into the facts and circumstances of the actions of The Pennsylvania State University surrounding the child sexual abuse committed by a former employee, Gerald A. Sandusky, will be available at 9am today. Mr. Freeh’s statement is available now by clicking on the Download the Press Release link below.

Editorial by John Ziegler Things Most People Still Don't "Get" About the Jerry Sandusky Scandal 6/24/2012 One of the most interesting phenomenon about the biggest news stories of the modern age is that the larger a story is, the bigger the gap seems to be between what people think they know about what happened and what really occurred (this is how most Americans think Bill Clinton was impeached for having oral sex with an intern) . Having communicated, from a contrarian point of view, with literally hundreds of people about the Jerry Sandusky case, I have been struck by how...

Former Penn State President Graham Spanier could face criminal charges in relation to the Jerry Sandusky case now that prosecutors have uncovered new evidence, NBC News reported this morning. According to NBC, prosecutors uncovered emails sent in 2001 in relation to what former assistant coach Mike McQueary reported he saw in a Lasch Building shower. McQueary, a graduate assistant at the time, testified that he saw Sandusky doing something that appeared to be "severe" and "sexual" in nature. Emails uncovered by investigators suggest Spanier conferred with former Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, saying it would be...

New for the 2012 spring term at Portland State University is a course called “Revolutionary Marxism: Theory and Practice”, where students will learn the fundamentals of Marxism and enacting revolution. The primary textbook will be “The Meaning of Marxism”, by Paul D’Amato...

The untold story, though, is about bare-knuckle Pennsylvania politics, old grudges and perceived slights. It involves a stagnated child sexual abuse investigation that, to some, took a backseat to higher-profile cases and a gubernatorial campaign. It involves a head football coach who knew too little and, still, failed to do enough. It includes a passive school board of trustees that for months ignored a lurking controversy and then, under pressure to preserve Penn State's reputation, quickly fired its legendary coach without ever talking with him. Through it all, the central character was Corbett. "Something not very good happened," he told...