Sports shorts Ex-Penn State coach wins defamation suit

A jury awarded a former Penn State assistant football coach $7.3 million in damages Thursday, finding the university defamed him after it became public that his testimony helped prosecutors charge Jerry Sandusky with child molestation.

Jurors deliberated for about four hours in Mike McQueary’s defamation and misrepresentation suit.

Judge Thomas Gavin still must decide McQueary’s whistleblower claim that he was treated unfairly as the school suspended him from coaching duties, placed him on paid administrative leave, barred him from team facilities and then did not renew his contract shortly after he testified at Sandusky’s 2012 trial.

McQueary remained stoic as the verdict was read, and he and his lawyers made no comment as they left the courthouse.

McQueary had been seeking more than $4 million in lost wages and other damages, saying he was defamed by a statement the school president released the day Sandusky was charged, retaliated against for helping with the Sandusky investigation and misled by school administrators.

Sandusky, a former defensive coach at Penn State, was convicted in 2012 of sexual abuse of 10 boys and is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence. He maintains his innocence.

“He should not have been the scapegoat,” lawyer Elliot Strokoff said of McQueary, speaking to jurors.

In closing arguments earlier Thursday, Penn State attorney Nancy Conrad emphasized McQueary had said he was damaged by public criticism that he did not to go to police or child-welfare authorities when he saw Sandusky sexually abusing a boy in a team shower in 2001. Instead he reported it the next day to then-head coach Joe Paterno.

Broncos running back C.J. Anderson will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his right knee Thursday and that the extent of the damage will determine how long he’s out, coach Gary Kubiak said.

Earlier Thursday, Anderson disputed a report that he had told people close to him that he was done for the season.