Salon.com > College Football

Jerry Sandusky speaks out

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:01:00 +0000

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Jerry Sandusky said in interview excerpts broadcast Monday that a key witness against him misinterpreted him showering with a young boy in Penn State football team facilities more than a decade ago.

Sandusky told documentary filmmaker John Ziegler, in recordings played on NBC's "Today" show, that he does not understand how Mike McQueary concluded "that sex was going on" when he witnessed Sandusky showering with a boy in 2001.

"That would have been the last thing I would have thought about," Sandusky said during what Ziegler described as 3½ hours of interviews. "I would have thought maybe fooling around or something like that."

McQueary, a graduate assistant in 2001, testified at trial that he heard "skin-on-skin smacking sound" and had no doubt he was witnessing anal sex.

The boy, identified as Victim 2 in court records, was not a witness at trial. A team of civil lawyers has said they are representing Victim 2 and posted online audio recordings of voicemails purportedly from Sandusky and left for the boy.

Manti Te’o and Ronaiah Tuiasosopo: The movie

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:24:00 +0000

No doubt the strange affair of Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te’o and his imaginary dead girlfriend will provide fodder for a movie somewhere down the line, whether cheesy and lesson-oriented, sleazy and exploitative or arty and sensitive (or perhaps all three at once). But with the recent confirmation that Te’o’s acquaintance Ronaiah Tuiasosopo created and maintained the female persona of Lennay Kekua because he was "deeply, romantically in love" with the studly football hero, it came to me that this story already is a movie.

Various commentators have already pointed out the similarities between the Te’o affair and other information-age scams, from the film-turned-TV show-turned-verb “Catfish” to the story of JT LeRoy, a purported transgender teen genius from Appalachia who turned out to be an adult female New York writer named Laura Albert. And it’s not as if Tuiasosopo was the first man in history to pose as a woman in order to seduce another man – or, on a more theoretical level, to blur the boundaries of sexual orientation. Just looking at recent culture, you have “M. Butterfly” and “The Crying Game,” not to mention the profusion of transgender or “shemale” pornography, which deliberately confuses heterosexual and homosexual desire and is primarily consumed by nominally straight men.

Manti Te’o: I was duped!

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 15:03:00 +0000

Manti Te'o really was the victim of an elaborate ruse. At least that's what Manti Te'o would have you think. In an interview with ESPN's Jeremy Schaap, the fallen Notre Dame star insists he had no knowledge of the hoax allegedly perpetrated by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo and two others to make him believe he was in a relationship with a woman named Lennay Kekua.

Some of Te'o's key claims from their 2 1/2-hour conversation:

• He tried to speak with Kekua via Skype and FaceTime on several occasions, but the person at the other end of the line was in what he called a "black box" and wasn't seen.

• He planned to meet Kekua in person several times, including in Los Angeles and Hawaii, but on each occasion she called off the meeting or sent others in her place.

• The first time he met Tuiasosopo was in Los Angeles. Notre Dame beat USC there on Nov. 24.

• A group of people connected to Tuiasosopo showed up at the team hotel, after curfew, for the Discover BCS National Championship Game in Miami. Te'o said he knew they were at the hotel because the group took photos in the hotel lobby. Someone in the group called Te'o, saying they were waiting for Kekua to join them in the lobby and asking if she was with him. Te'o then hung up. Te'o said it affected his play in the game, where Notre Dame lost to Alabama 42-14.

• Te'o was never asked for money during the plot, but Kekua once requested his checking account number in order to send him money. Te'o did not provide his account number.

According to Schaap, despite a preponderance of evidence, Te'o wasn't fully convinced his girlfriend didn't exist until just two days ago.

Notre Dame’s real dead woman

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:53:00 +0000

Less than a day into the Manti Te'o revelations, we've heard more about a fake dead girlfriend of a Notre Dame football player than a real dead girl. Lizzy Seeberg committed suicide, not long after being intimidated by Notre Dame football players for reporting a sexual assault by one of their teammates. A second woman who was taken to the hospital for a rape exam declined to formally accuse another Notre Dame football player after getting a series of bullying texts from players.

The handful of people who immediately took note of the contrast in the attention — both by the press and by the university — are absolutely right to be angry. But no one should be surprised.

Was ESPN announcer Brent Musberger being a creep?

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:45:00 +0000

Gosh, she's pretty. So very pretty. I'm sorry, what we were talking about? Oh, right, Katherine Webb, Brent Musberger, football. Hang on a minute. I'm getting lost in those piercing eyes again.

Katherine Webb has that effect on people. On Monday, the 23-year-old 2012 Miss Alabama became an overnight star when the cameras strayed away from the Alabama–Notre Dame game – and her boyfriend, quarterback AJ McCarron. "Do you see that lovely lady over there?" enthused ESPN announcer Brent Musberger, a man five decades years her senior.

"Wow, I'm telling you. You quarterbacks, you get all the good-looking women. What a beautiful woman! Wow! Whoa!" said Musberger, gushing like a guy coming off a juice cleanse in an Outback. "If you're a youngster in Alabama," he added, "start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with Pop."

Johnny Manziel of Texas A&M wins Heisman, first freshman

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 02:10:00 +0000

Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel has won the Heisman Trophy, becoming the first freshman to win college football's most prized individual award.

The redshirt freshman beat out Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o and Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein.

A few days after turning 20, Manziel became the most inexperienced player to win the Heisman. Adrian Peterson had come closest as a freshman, finishing second to Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart in 2004.

Manziel is the second player from Texas A&M to win the Heisman, and first since John David Crow 1957.

Manziel broke 2010 Heisman winner Cam Netwon's Southeastern Conference record with 4,600 total yards this season, led the Aggies to a 10-2 in their first SEC season and orchestrated an upset at No. 1 Alabama in November that stamped him as legit.

Will the religious right take on GOP racism?

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:23:00 +0000

Ask yourself: If you heard the following comments, what kind of person would you guess said them?

I believe (I've benefited) because I'm Caucasian. I believe that black men have less opportunity, less tenure and shorter time (to prove themselves in the workplace) ...

I think men of color have a more difficult road to tread and I think many people don't realize it ...

I've heard (people) say it doesn't matter what color (an employee) is (when they fire him). To me that offends every person of color out there. It is as if to suggest that everything is done on a fair scale. It's not done on a fair scale. Men of color don't have the same privileges or opportunities and they are under greater pressure when they step in (to a job) ...

For some reason our culture has dialed up something that causes us to have less confidence in people of color.

Now ask yourself: What would your reaction be if you discovered that those comments were made not by a civil rights activist or a liberal politician subsequently being decried as a "race baiter" by right-wing media outlets, but instead by one of the best known Christian conservative icons in America? You'd probably have trouble believing that was true.

Sandusky: “Evaluate the accusers”

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:20:00 +0000

Jerry Sandusky was sentenced Tuesday to 30 to 60 years in prison for sexually abusing children. The former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach showed no remorse in his first public statement while incarcerated, recorded Monday from his prison cell:

I'm responding to the worst loss of my life.

First, I looked at myself. Over and over, I asked why? Why didn't we have a fair opportunity to prepare for trial?... They can take away my life, they can make me out as a monster, they can treat me as a monster, but they can't take away my heart. In my heart, I know I did not do these alleged disgusting acts.

Sandusky went so far as to accuse the young boys who accused him of multiple counts of sexual abuse:

Evaluate the accusers and their families. Realize they didn't come out of isolation. The accusers were products of many more people and experiences than me. Look at their confidants and their honesty. Think about how easy it was for them to turn on me given the information, attention and potential perks. I never labeled or put down them or their families. I tried and I cared, then asked for the same.

Learning to hate football

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 16:00:00 +0000

On the evening of Oct. 22, 2001, I found myself riding around a bar in New York’s East Village on the back of a gentleman I’d met only a few hours before. It was the final minutes of a Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants. Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb connected with James Thrash for a touchdown putting the Eagles ahead of the Giants 10-9; the score would hold and the Eagles would win the game. The gentleman was the only other Philadelphian and Eagles fan in the bar and the minute I saw the official's arms go up and signal touchdown I leapt on that guy’s back and he gave me the craziest piggyback ride I’ve ever had. He had surprisingly strong legs and he used them to run all over that New York City bar while we sang the Eagles fight song in front of the assembled Giants fans.

We only stopped when a large security guard came over and said, “All right, you boys have had your fun, now knock that gay shit off.”

During the course of that game I must have eaten about 30 chicken wings, smoked a pack of cigarettes and had about 12 to 80 beers. I spent three hours giving in to some of my most hedonistic impulses in an effort to ease the delicious torture of a close football game, and the payoff was a euphoric two-minute victory lap in hostile territory on the back of a stranger.

Penn State must drop football

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 21:19:00 +0000

For months I’ve been insisting that the Penn State child abuse scandal is not a sports story. This morning, after reading highlights from Penn State’s investigative report, I realize I was wrong. That is, this may not be a sports story, but it is most definitely a football story.

It isn’t a football story just because the most famous and venerated coach in college football, Joe Paterno, is at the center of it. It isn’t a football story because Jerry Sandusky was a longtime assistant coach – and close friend – to Joe Paterno.

It isn’t even a football story because another assistant coach and former quarterback for the Nittany Lions, Mike McQueary, testified that he witnessed Sandusky abusing a young boy in the team’s locker room showers.

It’s a football story because all of the above and more, particularly that former Penn State president Graham Spanier, former vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley, according to independent investigator Louis Freeh, “All played a part in concealing the facts of Jerry Sandusky’s abuse.”

Alan Dershowitz thinks Joe Paterno was treated unfairly

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Finally, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz has weighed in on the firing of longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. It is practically a crime that we had to wait this long to hear what "The Dersh" has to say about the largely peripheral figure whose totally justified firing has subsumed most coverage of the horrific crimes alleged to have taken place under his watch. Here's Dershowitz's take: JoePa was treated unfairly, and he shouldn't be held responsible for crimes committed by his underling and covered up by his superiors.

Dershowitz's Harvard Legal Ethics class had a little debate about the Penn State situation. They all agree that Paterno had no legal obligation to do anything after assistant coach Mike McQueary told Paterno that he saw defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky raping children in the locker room shower. But what about his moral obligations?

The shame of Penn State

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:00:00 +0000

On Wednesday night, the Penn State Board of Trustees met -- for the first time since the child sex abuse scandal broke -- and subsequently announced that football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier had been fired. No, that's wrong, let's take those names in order of importance – first Graham Spanier and then Joe Paterno. What followed was a jaw-dropping torrent of angry, abusive questions from Penn State students directed to a cowed and bewildered John Surma, vice chairman of the trustees.

With the purpose of clarifying the issues, I'm going to do an instant replay on the questions and help Surma with the answers. (The following questions were taken right off the CNN telecast.)