Article “Junkets, JoePa and Phil Knight: Why Penn State’s relationship with Nike is more than a business deal” reports:
“Knight and Paterno became very close. Knight donated $400,000 to the Paterno Library at Penn State on the occasion of Paterno’s 400th coaching victory (now, of course, stripped by the NCAA as penance for the Jerry Sandusky scandal)…
Nike announced that the child-care center at its Oregon headquarters would no longer be named after Paterno.
But Knight reversed his position when the so-called Paterno Report, purporting to refute the Freeh Report, was released.
‘I made this statement without having read the report in full,’ Knight said in a prepared statement.
‘With the release of the report by the King and Spalding law firm, including analysis by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former FBI profiler James Clemente, it is clear that the findings of the Freeh Report were unjustified and unsubstantiated.
The NCAA’s actions are exposed as totally unwarranted. The NCAA acted outside its charter and rendered judgment absent any kind of investigation or judicial hearing. It was simply grandstanding.’ ’’
WATCHDOG: Two wags of the tail.
