![]() McQueary in 2007 | |
Biographical details | |
---|---|
Born | Durham, North Carolina, U.S. | October 10, 1974
Alma mater | Penn State University |
Playing career | |
1994–1997 | Penn State |
Position(s) | Quarterback |
Coaching career (HC unless noted) | |
2000–2003 | Penn State (assistant) |
2004–2011 | Penn State (WR/RC) |
Michael Jacob McQueary (born October 10, 1974) [1] is a former American football assistant coach for the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) under head coach Joe Paterno until late in the 2011 football season. [2] McQueary was identified as a key witness in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. [3]
After a high school career at State College Area High School, McQueary was a quarterback for Penn State from 1994 through 1997. He backed up Kerry Collins in 1994, and backed up Wally Richardson in 1995 and 1996. He started all 12 games as a senior in 1997, leading Penn State to a 9–3 record and a Citrus Bowl bid. In his first college start against Pittsburgh (on September 6), McQueary passed for a then-Penn State record 366 yards in a 34–17 victory over the Panthers. For the season, he completed 146 of 255 passes for 2211 yards and 17 touchdowns (both yards and touchdowns second in the Big Ten to Purdue's Billy Dicken), while tossing 9 interceptions.[ citation needed ]
McQueary returned to Penn State in 2000 following attempts to catch on in the National Football League (NFL) with the Oakland Raiders [4] and in NFL Europe with the Scottish Claymores. [5] His roles on the football coaching staff included graduate assistant coach (2000–2002), administrative assistant (2003), and recruiting coordinator and receivers coach (2004–2011). As recruiting coordinator, McQueary oversaw the recruitment of several high-profile recruits including Justin King, Derrick Williams and Andrew Quarless.
On November 11, 2011, Penn State announced McQueary would not be serving as receivers coach in the final home game of the season due to threats against him, [6] and put him on indefinite paid administrative leave. Later that day, The Patriot-News reported that McQueary told his receivers in a conference call that he would no longer be their coach. [7]
McQueary later filed a lawsuit seeking up to $4 million in damages from the university for wrongful termination. [8] [9] The trial date was set for October 17, 2016, [10] upon which it opened with testimony by a state prosecutor. [11] The university's action, framed both as wrongful dismissal and for damages in defamation (libel and slander), was seen as such by a jury and McQueary was awarded $7.3 million, including compensatory and punitive damages, on October 27, 2016. [12] Penn State filed an appeal on November 7, 2016, [13] and on November 30, another almost $5 million was ordered payable to McQueary based on a separate charge that his firing was retaliation for whistleblowing. [14] Penn State appealed the verdicts, and McQueary ended his lawsuit in November 2017, after reaching undisclosed settlement terms with the university. [15]
McQueary was identified as a key witness in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. [3] Grand jury testimony alleged McQueary reported to Paterno of witnessing Jerry Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in a campus locker room; McQueary first told his father about the incident, then the next day informed Paterno, and then ten days later informed other university officials. [3] [16] Journalist John Ziegler has questioned the case's reported dates and timelines, [17] particularly the night of the incident being February 9, 2001, as there was a concert underway that evening. [18]
According to investigators and legal experts, McQueary was initially not implicated in any wrongdoing because he reported the incident to Paterno. Under Pennsylvania state law of the time, any state employee who learns about an allegation of child abuse was required to report it to his or her immediate supervisor. In this case, McQueary did what he was legally obligated to do by reporting it to his immediate supervisor, Paterno. [19] [20] However, he was criticized for not intervening to protect the boy from Sandusky, as well as for not reporting the incident to police himself. [21] [22] McQueary later said he made sure the observed assault stopped before he left, and that he discussed the incident with police. [23] However, McQueary's claim to have contacted police officials could not be corroborated by either university police or the State College police department. [24]
The university senior vice president and others have been charged with perjury for saying that McQueary had reported only horseplay at the time. A prominent Pennsylvania nephrologist says that he was present when McQueary described the incident to his father and the description mentioned hearing but not seeing "rhythmic slapping sounds" in the other room, seeing Sandusky put his hand around the child's waist and later emerging wearing a towel. [25] Mike McQueary's testimony for the preliminary perjury trial indicates that he heard 'two or three' slapping sounds before entering the locker room, and later saw Sandusky with his arms around the child's waist while hearing 'more than one' of the showerheads running and saw that the child's hair 'was wet'; although he did not see any sexual contact of hands or genitals or any evidence of arousal, just from the positions of the bodies he knew it was 'over the line' and 'extremely sexual' and 'some sort of intercourse' was taking place, and that he tried to explain what he had seen to Coach Paterno by using the word 'fondling.' [26] Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett, who as state attorney general opened the grand jury investigation, has said that McQueary "met the minimum obligation in reporting it up, but did not in my opinion meet a moral obligation that all of us would have." [27] It has been speculated that he was still employed because he was protected by Pennsylvania's whistleblower law. [20] [21]
As of March 2014, he was separated from his wife Barbara, who was living in Virginia with their daughter, then four years old. McQueary has an older brother, John II. Their father, physician John Sr, has described theirs as "an unusually close family", having been close before the sex abuse scandal and more so after it became so well known. [9] [28]
In April 2017, McQueary was among several passersby who came to the aid of an elderly woman who was a victim of an automobile crash near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. [29]
Joseph Vincent Paterno, sometimes referred to as JoePa, was an American college football player, athletic director, and coach. He was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions from 1966 to 2011. With 409 victories, Paterno is the most victorious coach in NCAA FBS history. He recorded his 409th victory on October 29, 2011; his career ended with his dismissal from the team on November 9, 2011, as a result of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. He died 74 days later, of complications from lung cancer.
Graham Basil Spanier is a South African-born American sociologist and university administrator who became the 16th president of Pennsylvania State University on September 1, 1995. On November 9, 2011, in the wake of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, Spanier and longtime football coach Joe Paterno were “removed from their positions” by the Penn State board of trustees.
Mark Allen Emmert is the former president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He was the fifth CEO of the NCAA; he was named as the incoming president on April 27, 2010, and assumed his duties on November 1, 2010, and remained in office until March 1, 2023.
John Ziegler is a former radio program host, documentary film writer/director, and conservative journalist.
Gregory Edward Schiano is an American football coach. He is the head football coach at Rutgers University, a position he held from 2001 to 2011 and resumed before the 2020 season. Schiano has the most wins in program history as the head football coach of Rutgers Scarlet Knights football. He also served as the head coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL) from 2012 to 2013.
Ron Vanderlinden is a retired American college football coach. Vanderlinden was most recently the linebackers coach at Air Force. He served as the head football coach at the University of Maryland, College Park from 1997 to 2000, compiling a record of 15–29.
The Penn State Nittany Lions team represents the Pennsylvania State University in college football. The Nittany Lions compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision as a member of the Big Ten Conference, which they joined in 1993 after playing as an Independent from 1892 to 1992.
Richard E. Anderson is a former American football player and coach. He served as the head football coach at Rutgers University from 1984 to 1989, compiling a record of 28–33–4. His highlight victory during that span was 21–16 win over Penn State in 1988—Rutgers' first win over the Nittany Lions in 70 years. He played college football at Penn State, and served there as an assistant football coach for many years under Joe Paterno.
Gerald Arthur Sandusky is an American convicted serial child molester and retired college football coach.
The 2011 Penn State Nittany Lions football team represented the Pennsylvania State University in the 2011 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The team was coached by Joe Paterno for the first nine games until he was fired in the wake of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, with defensive coordinator Tom Bradley taking over as interim head coach for the remainder of the season. The team played its home games in Beaver Stadium in University Park, Pennsylvania, US. They were members of the Big Ten Conference in the newly formed Leaders Division. They finished the season 9–4, 6–2 in the Leaders Division to be co–division champions with Wisconsin. Due to their head-to-head loss to Wisconsin, they did not represent the division in the inaugural Big Ten Championship Game. They were invited to the TicketCity Bowl where they lost to Houston 14–30.
The Penn State child sex abuse scandal concerned allegations and subsequent convictions of child sexual abuse committed by Jerry Sandusky, an assistant coach for the Penn State Nittany Lions football team, over a period of at least fifteen years. The scandal began to emerge publicly in March 2011 and broke in early November 2011 when Sandusky was indicted on 52 counts of child molestation, stemming from incidents that occurred between 1994 and 2009. Sandusky was ultimately convicted on 45 counts of child sexual abuse on June 22, 2012, and was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 60 years in prison. Of the 10 victims who were listed, only eight appeared at trial. All were over the age of 18 by the time they testified. Six were over 21.
The Second Mile was a nonprofit organization for underprivileged youth, providing help for at-risk children and support for their parents in Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1977 by Jerry Sandusky, a then-Penn State assistant college football coach. The charity said its youth programs served as many as 100,000 children annually. The organization ceased operations after Sandusky was found guilty of child sex abuse.
Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story is a 2001 autobiography of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky outlining his career with the Penn State Nittany Lions and his charitable work with The Second Mile. The book is somewhat unusual among sports biographies in that it focuses on an assistant coach, and in its focus on Sandusky's work with his charity. It garnered renewed attention after Sandusky was charged with several counts of child sexual abuse.
Timothy M. Curley is a former athletic director for Penn State University.
David M. Joyner, an orthopedic physician and a former member of the Penn State University Board of Trustees, is a former athletic director for Penn State.
Sara Elizabeth Ganim is an American journalist and podcast host. She is the current Hearst Journalism Fellow at the University of Florida's Brechner Center for Freedom of Information and the James Madison Visiting Professor on First Amendment Issues at the Columbia Journalism School. Previously, she was a correspondent for CNN. In 2011 and 2012, she was a reporter for The Patriot-News, a daily newspaper in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There she broke the story that featured the Sandusky scandal and the Second Mile charity. For the Sandusky/Penn State coverage, "Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News Staff" won a number of national awards including the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, making Ganim the third-youngest winner of a Pulitzer. The award cited "courageously revealing and adeptly covering the explosive Sandusky sex scandal involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky."
Game Over: Jerry Sandusky, Penn State, and the Culture of Silence is a 2012 book written by Bill Moushey and Bob Dvorchak about Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. Moushey in an investigative journalist, formerly with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and a professor at the school of Communications at Point Park University. He won National Press Club's Freedom of Information Award in 1997. Dvorchak is a 40-year veteran journalist.
Joe Paterno is a bronze sculpture of Joe Paterno, former head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions football team. It was located on the northeast side of Beaver Stadium on the campus of the Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pennsylvania until it was removed in 2012 in the aftermath of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal.
Silent No More: Victim 1's Fight for Justice Against Jerry Sandusky is a 2012 book by Aaron Fisher, identified as "Victim 1" in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. Fisher is called "Victim 1" because it was his reporting his abuse to high school officials that set off the investigation that led to Sandusky's conviction. The book follows Fisher's experience from the beginning of his interaction with Jerry Sandusky at The Second Mile through Sandusky's conviction of 45 of 48 counts related to child sex abuse.
Paterno is a 2018 American television drama film directed by Barry Levinson. It stars Al Pacino as former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, and his career leading up to his dismissal following the university's child sex abuse scandal in 2011. Riley Keough, Kathy Baker, Greg Grunberg and Annie Parisse also star. The film premiered on HBO on April 7, 2018.
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