In the indices of the Freeh report, there are several letters and memos from Sandusky to University officials at the time of his retirement. There are what some (myself included) call veiled threats that if the University wants him to keep his mouth shut, they should give him what he wants. That includes the aforementioned access to school facilities, as well as being set up to coach middle school football, a request that was signed-off in the margins of the retirement agreement by Paterno himself, with the notes, and I quote “6th, 7th and 8th grade children” in Paterno’s own handwriting. That, along with an unprecdented one time payment of $168,000 to Sandusky as part of his retirement certainly makes it look like Sandusky had them by the shorts and knew it.
Clearly Paterno and the University just didn’t care that young boys were being raped and sodomized, and were prepared to provide Sandusky with a steady stream of victims to buy his silence. As for Sandusky, his behavior with his requests leads me to believe that the University was covering his tracks for a longtime, and he felt more than comfortable in blackmailing them because of it. Whatever else he feared, he did not fear exposure by Penn State. He knew they had as much to lose as him.
I don’t see how Sandusky would be in the position to blackmail the university in 1998. Not every accusation is true, so I don’t think the initial reaction from Penn State was so bad. It was the stuff after 2002 that’s indefensible.