Still too many questions at Penn State

Twenty-four hours after Joe Paterno was dismissed from coaching the Penn State football team, many questions still linger about the entire child sexual abuse scandal.

If you don't know the entire details of Jerry Sandusky and his atrocious actions against defenseless children during and after his time as defensive coordinator for the Nittany Lions, please visit the Harrisburg Patriot-News. The Patriot-News have done an amazing job during this week, and a lot of credit should its crime reporter, Sara Ganim.

Although the elite media outlets have only covered the Paterno story, the grand jury report and the Penn State student body protesting, Ganim reported on Sandusky in March and August, and has spoke to several victims and their families.

I have been extremely impressed by the Patriot-News coverage, and I agree with its editorial board that Paterno needed to be fired, and a clean house was necessary to remove the Nittany Lions' staff from this scandal.

With the main media fixated on focusing on Paterno, I think many questions still need to be answered before I can move on to other issues.

In 1998, Sandusky took an 11-year-old boy, that he met through his The Second Mile program, into the locker rooms and hugged him in the shower. After the incident, the young boy told his mother what happened after she saw his hair was wet from the shower. His mother went to the university police who investigated the incident. This incident led to Sandusky retiring from Penn State in 1999.

A few questions stem from this incident. It seems obvious Sandusky stepped down quietly to keep Penn State from having this scandal blow up in '99. But, the investigation led to zero charges being filed. Zero. How can a mother hear that her son was in a shower with a grown man, and not press any charges?

The mother now says she was advised to not talk to the press about the incident. My big question is did Penn State pay the mother to keep quiet? Are there any other reasons a mother wouldn't go absolutely crazy in this situation?

My next set of questions relate to the most popular victim, the one the then-graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, saw in the shower with Sandusky and told Paterno about afterwards. McQueary had an eyewitness account of Sandusky's heinous actions and I think did the right thing in telling his father and Paterno. Although he didn't call the authorities, you have to realize this guy wanted to be a coach after his football career at Penn State and probably looked up to Sandusky.

The next morning, McQueary told Paterno that he saw "inappropriate contact." Paterno told athletic director Tim Curley, who testified that he heard Sandusky, was "horsing around" but nothing further about inappropriate actions.

Many agree this was the first mistake by Penn State officials and Paterno. It's incomprehensible to me that they wouldn't take a simple phone call to the authorities to investigate the incident, no matter how good of a friend Sandusky was to them. You would also think McQueary or his father would have followed up to make sure this was being investigated in the upcoming days or weeks.

Curley was believe to have placed a ban on Sandusky for bringing children onto campus at some point right after that, however, that is false because Sandusky brought The Second Mile children on campus until 2008.

This is where more questions begin popping. Yes, this is where Paterno should have stepped in and told the proper authorities about Sandusky, especially if you see him still walking around with children. The more unasked question is did the Penn State program allow McQueary to become a coach if he didn’t press charges or extra coverage onto Sandusky? McQueary was promoted from graduate assistant to administrative assistant to following season. After one year as administrative assistant in 2003, McQueary was promoted once again to the Penn State coaching staff where he now serves as an assistant coach and wide receivers coach while being the recruiting coordinator. It's interesting how he got promoted so quickly after he witnessed this incident.

This situation gets even more interesting. Ray Gricar was the long-time DA for the Penn State area, and he went missing in 2005, after being presented with details of Sandusky's crimes in the 1998 grand jury investigation. Several months after going missing, Gricar's computer was found but it's hard drive was destroyed. Am I saying Gricar's disappearance is related to Sandusky? Not too confidently, but how hard and how far can Penn State sweep a scandal under the rug?

What would make me believe Gricar's disappearance was related to this scandal, would be the rumor presented by radio personality Mark Madden. It may be nothing more than a rumor and just regular gossip, but it is floating around that Sandusky was using boys from The Second Mile Foundation and "pimping" them out to rich donors. Could a DA go missing if he had information a child sex-ring at Penn State? I think this scandal would jump to Watergate levels if that is the case, but the jury is still out on that rumor.

Forty counts in trial and hundreds of questions still remain. Sandusky committed some of the most horrendous acts, and used his football connections to help himself out. Yes he is the main monster, but that doesn't change my mind about the simple phone call that Paterno, Curley and several other officials in the Penn State administration could and should have made.

I firmly believe Paterno knows more than he is letting on, and he is beyond more than guilty of just not alerting the authorities. Paterno held the most prestige around Penn State, and I'm sure this isn't the first scandal he got people to forget about. Paterno deserved to be fired, and until further notice, he still has a lot of questions to be answered.

Basketball returns to the Hilltop

Bradley basketball is back for another season. Here is the recap from the Braves' exhibition game against Wisconsin-Parkside.