Malkin dismissed Rice’s firing as “political correctness ... run amok.” Hannity mused that he could understand asking Rice to “stop hitting” players, but praised the coach’s “intensity” and “drive.” “I like that he’s pushing those kids and he runs a tight ship. Maybe we need a little more discipline in society and maybe we don’t have to be a bunch of wimps for the rest of our lives.”

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The interview, which aired this morning on the "Today" show, offers few surprises. Sandusky maintains his innocence and shows no sign of remorse, laughing off the disputed testimony of former assistant coach Mike McQueary. The Paterno family, meanwhile, have publicly decried the interview as "misguided and inappropriate," distancing themselves from any defense of Joe Paterno that hinges on the account of Jerry Sandusky.

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Sandusky also said that former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno would not have let him coach if he believed he was a pedophile: “If he [Paterno] absolutely thought I was [a pedophile], I'd say no. If he had a suspicion, I don't know the answer to that.”

Of McQueary's allegations, Sandusky said:

I don't understand how anybody would have walked into that locker room from where he was and heard sounds associated that was sex going on like he said that could've been. I mean, that would have been the last thing I would have thought about. I would have thought maybe fooling around or something like that.

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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.

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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.

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Prosecutors also added counts against two of Spanier's former underlings, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, who were already charged with lying to the grand jury that investigated the former Penn State assistant football coach.

"This was not a mistake by these men. This was not an oversight. It was not misjudgment on their part," said state Attorney General Linda Kelly. "This was a conspiracy of silence by top officials to actively conceal the truth."

Spanier's lawyers issued a statement that asserted his innocence and described the new charges as an attempt by Gov. Tom Corbett to divert attention from the three-year investigation that began under his watch as attorney general.

"These charges are the work of a vindictive and politically motivated governor working through an unelected attorney general ... whom he appointed to do his bidding," the four defense lawyers wrote.

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Mann filed his complaint against the National Review Inc., the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and journalists Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn for articles in July that the complaint says made "utterly false and defamatory statements against Dr. Mann -- accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced former football coach at Pennsylvania State University."

In one article in question, Steyn compared the Penn State investigation to its investigation of Jerry Sandusky. "And, as with Sandusky and [former football coach Joe] Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing," he wrote.

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An ever-increasing array of potential victims now mounts – U.K. police are now following 400 lines of inquiry involving over 200 children and teenagers — sometimes on BBC premises. And as the investigation grows, there are disturbing questions of how much Savile's longtime media home knew about his behavior, how little the venerable network may have done to protect the kids Savile preyed upon, and, significantly, how insensitive about his possible crimes it has been right up to the present day.

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The former Penn State assistant football coach was sentenced Tuesday to at least 30 years in prison for abusing 10 young boys. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, "The State Employees' Retirement System informed Sandusky on Wednesday that his crimes triggered forfeiture of his pension ... The retirement system told Sandusky he will no longer receive his $4,908 monthly annuity and informed his wife, Dottie, she is no longer entitled to a survivor's benefit."

The retirement system will not seek repayment of the money Sandusky received from 1999 to September 2012 -- more than $900,000.

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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.

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Ballantine Bantam Dell said that "Silent No More: Victim (hash)1's Fight for Justice Against Jerry Sandusky," is coming out Oct. 23. The memoir will be co-written by the victim's mother and psychologist and "will share how he survived years of shame and secrecy, harassment and accusation, before reporting Sandusky's actions to the authorities, and will offer a hopeful and inspiring message for victims of abuse," Ballantine announced.

Victim 1, now 18, will reveal his identity on the day of the book's release in an interview with ABC's Chris Cuomo.

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In 1984, less than four months after his 18th birthday — the minimum age required for capital punishment — Terrance “Terry” Williams was sentenced to death for the murder of 56-year-old Amos Norwood, a Philadelphia church leader. With the help of 18-year-old Marc Draper, the son of a police officer, Williams smashed Norwood’s skull with a tire iron, set fire to his body and dumped him in a cemetery. Just five months earlier, Williams was convicted of third-degree murder for killing 50-year-old Herbert Hamilton, who was found naked on his kitchen floor with a knife in his throat.

But according to Williams’ lawyers, both the jury and defense were deliberately kept in the dark about the true motive behind the killings -- the sexual abuse Williams, now 46, endured at the hands of Hamilton and Norwood. At the time, Williams now says, he was too ashamed to admit the abuse. Now he says he was violently raped by Norwood the night before the murder. Five of the jurors that sentenced Williams to death have testified that they never would have done so had they known about Williams’ history of childhood sexual abuse -- and had they known that his victims were also his abusers.

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Cosentino writes:

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Posnanski, a sportswriter who has authored many justly admired pieces, particularly about baseball, was handed what turned into a once in a lifetime opportunity last year, when he was invited by Joe Paterno to spend the fall in State College, Penn., so that the author could have daily access to the subject of his biography. (Posnanski gives no sign of understanding that Paterno did him this service so that the subject would also have daily access to the biographer.)

This became an extraordinary journalistic and literary opportunity in the first week of November, when the Jerry Sandusky scandal became public knowledge. To say that Posnanski botches that opportunity is akin to saying that the Titanic’s maiden voyage might have gone more smoothly.

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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.”

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For example, when you're covering a story involving charges of "rape, aggravated sexual contact and multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault" at the Lackland Air Force Base, you might want to reconsider framing it, as the Washington Post does, as a "widening sex scandal," or as the Boston Herald calls it, a "growing sex scandal," or even, as the Christian Science Monitor says, a garden-variety "sex scandal." If you happen to say, as the AP does, that the "Air Force says 31 victims so far in sex scandal," or as already credibility-strained CNN declares, that there are now "31 victims identified in widening Air Force sex scandal," please note that word "victims" there. It's the important one.

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Outside the courthouse, however, there was a different kind of spectacle. A crowd had gathered. News crews and well-groomed newscasters stood at the ready beneath bright, shining Friday Night Lights. The proceedings had the air of a football game, a carnival, a celebration of … well, something. If the courtroom was quiet and respectful as the verdict was read, outside it was bedlam. An outsize cheer went up; the crowd roared. The Washington Post described it as an unmistakable sound: "It was the cheer you hear at a football game when a team scores the winning touchdown."

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