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Despite talk after Sandusky scandal, Penn State athletic machine churns on By Frank Fitzpatrick Inquirer Staff Writer An artist's rendering of the Pegula Ice Arena, which will open at Penn State next year. The arena is being built, at a cost of $102 million, mostly through a single donation. On July 23, as grim Penn State athletics employees watched NCAA president Mark Emmert cite their football program as an example of college sports' worst excesses, workers across the street were busy constructing a $102 million hockey arena set to open next year. Visible all around University Park that morning were...

Paterno family intends to appeal NCAA sanctionsBy GENARO C. ARMAS (AP Sports Writer) | The Associated Press – 18 hours ago STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- Joe Paterno's family said it planned to appeal the sanctions imposed by the NCAA against Penn State for the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. The governing body's response: Don't bother. Family lawyer Wick Sollers in a letter sent Friday to the NCAA said the Paternos would like to appeal the ''enormous damage'' done to Penn State, the community, athletes and the late Hall of Fame coach. He died in January at age 85....

Lawyer: Sandusky upset over Penn State sanctionsBy MARK SCOLFORO | The Associated Press – 43 minutes ago HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Jerry Sandusky is distraught over the NCAA penalties issued to Penn State's football program for the school's handling of his child sexual abuse scandal and maintains his innocence as he awaits sentencing, his defense lawyer said Wednesday. Attorney Joe Amendola told The Associated Press in a phone interview that Sandusky told him that even if people believe he is guilty of the crimes for which he was convicted in June, it would be ''ridiculous'' to think Penn State administrators...

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Backup Penn State safety Tim Buckley has become the first player to transfer from Penn State in the wake of NCAA sanctions, while the future of a more prominent player, star tailback Silas Redd, remains in question.

Jim Singer, formerly a psychologist working in Pennsylvania, said that he reported a case of child molestation in 1986 to Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services agency, and not only was his report ignored, but soon after, in retaliation, the Pennsylvania Psychology Board prosecuted Singer and eventually removed his license to practice psychology. As the aftermath of the Penn State University molestation scandal unfolds, most observers believe that if the proper authorities had been alerted to the crimes much earlier, many children could have been saved. That’s not always the case, says Singer. Speaking exclusively with The Daily Caller, Singer said that...

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.

A former Catholic priest who now heads a charity that assists sexual abuse victims said Thursday his group is representing a previously unknown victim of Jerry Sandusky. Robert Hoatson, co-founder and president of New Jersey-based Road to Recovery Inc., said the man claims he was abused by Sandusky about 25 years ago, when he was 15, visiting for a summer football camp. The man, now about 40 years old, is currently incarcerated in a Massachusetts state prison “for serious crimes,” and does not want to be identified, because he fears repercussions in the prison, Hoatson said. Speaking outside Beaver Stadium,...

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.

The man who was seen being sexually assaulted in the Penn State showers by Jerry Sandusky in 2001 has come forward and identified himself to attorneys, who say that he plans to sue the university. A man claiming to be Victim 2, whom assistant coach Mike McQueary saw being molested in the shower by Sandusky, is being represented by four attorneys, including Joel Feller and Matt Casey of Philadelphia and Justine Andronici and Andrew Shubin of State College, according to a statement released by the attorneys today. The man's name is not being released to the public, but his attorneys...

Victim 2, the boy who was, until now, known to exist only because Mike McQueary saw him being molested by Jerry Sandusky in a Penn State shower in 2001, has come forward to two State College lawyers. Andrew Shubin and Justine Andronici, two lawyers who launched their own investigation into Sandusky's activities over the last four decades -- and the reactions of people around him -- say that Victim 2 has identified himself to them. As part of the investigation, they acquired voicemails from Sandusky to the man, and released those on www. rossfellercasey.com, the website of the Philadelphia law...

Calling all Philly area Freepers: we need to convince management of WNTP 990 AM to drop Penn State sports programming. After the Sandusky scandal, they won't be able to justify their continuing pre-emptions of regularly scheduled talk radio programs, as ratings for games and sports talk will no doubt collapse.

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, Pa. – Jay Paterno, then the Penn State quarterbacks coach, worked for Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign before the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania in 2008. Paterno helped organize a campus rally and introduced Obama to a big crowd on the sloping lawn in front of Old Main, the university administration building. Obama lost the primary to Sen. Hilary Clinton but won Centre County. Nearly a year ago, on Feb. 2, 2011, President Obama came to Penn State and met Jay’s parents, Nittany Lion head coach Joe Paterno and his wife Sue. On Monday, the day after Joe Paterno succumbed...

College sports' governing body today suspended Penn State's football team from postseason bowl play for four years and fined the university $60 million for its handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. The team also must vacate all wins from 1998 through 2011. "The career record of former head football coach Joe Paterno will reflect these vacated records," the NCAA said in a statement. "Penn State must also reduce 10 initial and 20 total scholarships each year for a four-year period. In addition, the NCAA reserves the right to impose additional sanctions on involved individuals at the conclusion...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Penn State football was all but leveled Monday by an NCAA ruling that wiped away 14 years of coach Joe Paterno's victories and imposed a mountain of fines and penalties, crippling a program whose pedophile assistant coach spent uncounted years molesting children, sometimes on university property. The sanctions by the governing body of college sports, which capped eight months of turmoil on the central Pennsylvania campus, stopped short of delivering the "death penalty" of shutting down the sport. But the NCAA hit Penn State with $60 million in fines, ordered it out of the postseason for four years,...

Don't think there is a story yet, but here is the sanctions: 60 Million Fine Loss of ten schollies per year with current schollies able to transfer immediately 4 year post season ban

. . . [Duke President Richard] Brodhead’s initial public statement said that people must uphold the presumption of innocence. But at a private meeting that included faculty members who signed the ad, he was excoriated for that statement . . . In a subsequent open letter to the Duke community, Mr. Brodhead canceled the lacrosse season, accepted the coach's resignation, and added several sentences about the evils of rape and the legacy of racism and misogyny. It made no reference to the lacrosse players' presumption of innocence. . . . In the end, justice was done, to some extent. North...

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...

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The famed statue of Joe Paterno was taken down from outside the Penn State football stadium Sunday as the NCAA announced it would be issuing sanctions against the university whose top officials were accused in a scathing report of burying child sex abuse allegations against a now-convicted retired assistant. Workers lifted the 7-foot-tall statue off its base and used a forklift to move it into Beaver Stadium as the 100 to 150 students watched, some chanting, "We are Penn State."

The Joe Paterno statue was removed Sunday morning from its pedestal outside Beaver Stadium, and it will be stored in an unnamed "secure location," Penn State president Rodney Erickson announced. Erickson also said the Paterno name will remain on the university's library. Shortly before dawn in State College, Pa., a work crew installed chain-link fences to barricade access to Porter Road outside Beaver Stadium and covered the fence with a blue tarp. The work crew then removed the 7-foot, 900-pound bronze statue by forklift and placed it into the lower level of the stadium. Erickson released his highly sensitive decision...