SCRANTON TIMES-TRIBUNE Editorial: …Mr. Freeh’s report to the Penn State Board of Trustees about the Jerry Sandusky scandal widely was greeted as the definitive, unquestionable word. The board didn’t contest it. National news media – particularly the talking heads of the electronic sports media – treated it as gospel. The NCAA accepted it and imposed draconian sanctions against the Penn State football program, while violating its own bylaws by not conducting an investigation of its own.
Now an exhaustive four-part report commissioned by the Paterno family raises valid questions about the Freeh report. Mr. Freeh called the rebuttal “self-serving,” which it might well be, but any objective reading of it also would find it to be thorough, factual, professional and enlightening…
If the NCAA truly is interested in fairness, it seriously will consider the rebuttal’s findings relative to the Freeh report and conclude that it, like Mr. Paterno and Mr. Freeh, is not infallible. It should conclude that its own bylaws precluded its intervention, that the courts of Pennsylvania are perfectly capable of rendering justice relative to Mr. Sandusky’s victims, and that it unfairly punished people who had nothing to do with the multiple tragedies unleashed by Mr. Sandusky… (more)
