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| Mike McQueary |
First. Penn State has decided to pull wide receiver coach and recruiting coordinator Mike McQueary, a primary witness in the Jerry Sandusky investigation from Saturday's game against Nebraska.
In a tersely worded statement on the school's athletic website, the quote was: "Due to multiple threats made against assistant coach Mike McQueary, the University has decided it would be in the best interest of assistant coach McQueary not to be in attendance for Saturday's game."
Not exactly a statement of strength and unity there. While it is very disconcerting that people would be threatening bodily harm to McQueary, which should never be happening, his status and questions about what he did in the investigation have become somewhat of a lightning rod.
Penn State and their HORRENDOUS PR department should have addressed this long before Thursday night. There are many people saying McQueary should also be relieved of duty. His status apparently is not in question.
Also.
The Harrisburg Patriot-News gives us a very detailed and fascinating look at the timeline of events in the investigation surrounding Sandusky. It shows lots of small hints and indications there may be a problem, but none of those allegeations were either followed up on or taken seriously by most. The only group to take some proactive action; Central Mountain High School, where Sandusky was briefly a volunteer coach. He had been found in some questionable situations, including being found on top of a teen in an out of the way gymnasium. But nobody filed any charges.
Read the timeline from the Patriot-News RIGHT HERE
Fascinating. And it also explains one of the big problems here and one of the big problems in any of these types of investigations.
Connecting the dots.
Sure, those of us not involved can sit back and say the evidence was "Right in front of you". But, this type of crime is something that you don't know....until you know.
We can indirectly say that this type of crime is so unimaginable and out of the norm that you can't believe it happened until someone tells you it did. As someone who has done many stories in the news world on this. Even close relatives miss obvious signs. They don't see what is in front of them. And short of actually seeing it happen, which Mike McQueary did, it is incredibly hard to process.
Without getting on the soapbox here, McQueary should have tried to step in and stop what he saw. There is no excusing that. Going to his boss the next day fulfilled his obligation to an extent, but it is also a decision he can't take back. You either do one thing or the other and don't get a do-over. The problem is, he can't come back and coach at Penn State now. He has no credibility. It will be nearly impossible for him to gain the trust of parents to let their kids come to Penn State.
The problem....from the get go...is that Penn State still seems unable to see this.
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