A day later, Tennessee and its social media mob of a fan base somehow looks worse.
Greg Schiano received resounding support from football luminaries such as Patriots coach Bill Belichick, was cleared of any connection to the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal by a Penn State trustee who says he has made it his “life’s work” to study the case and was backed by the higher-ups at Ohio State. Even Tennessee admitted it found nothing alarming when it vetted Schiano and looked into the Penn State case.
It seems, however, nothing is going to change in this sordid, ugly and strange saga. Tennessee isn’t having second thoughts about parting ways with Schiano after his name was dragged through the mud by its angry fans, and it remains uncertain how it will impact his chances to land a head-coaching position in the near future.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith told Cleveland.com. “Never.”
Fortunately for the 51-year-old former Rutgers and Buccaneers head coach and current Ohio State defensive coordinator, the record at least was set straight somewhat Monday. That was a day after Tennessee fans took to social media to attack his character amid claims Schiano had witnessed Sandusky’s behavior once in the early 1990s, when he was an assistant coach, based on second-hand hearsay that never was proven or corroborated.
In a 2015 civil suit deposition released a year later, whistleblower and former Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary claimed former assistant coach Tom Bradley told him Schiano came to him in the early 1990s “white as a ghost and said he just saw Jerry doing something to a boy in the shower.”
That was it. Schiano never was deposed. He never was identified by any witnesses as looking the other way. His name never came up in any of the criminal proceedings.