Mike McQueary's Bad Habits and the Job Search

by Barry Bozeman

This week's Big Game is Mike McQueary vs Penn State for alleged defamation resulting in a lack of coaching job offers. Did Penn State harm McQueary's chances in the wake of the Nov 2011 indictments against former PSU coach Sandusky, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and VP Gary Schultz?

Today is the 2nd day of testimony and witnesses have offered explanations for McQueary's lack of job opportunities. PSU's defense claims McQueary's inaction when he claims to have seen or heard something between Jerry Sandusky and a boy of 10 in a locker room turned off the potential customers for his services. 

Either McQueary witnessed a sexual assault and failed to do anything about it, or he was confused about what he heard and "visualized" it as a sexual assault. Either way, his actions or inaction has been the cause of his lack of offers according to some.

McQueary blames this statement from Graham Spanier for his inability to land a job 

GRAHAM SPANIER SUPPORTS HIS STAFF MEMBERS

But there have been reports of something other than the 2001 Sandusky situation and the 2011 fallout from the November ambush that have been raised by ESPN and other media outlets.

From THE WHISTLEBLOWER'S LAST STAND 
ESPN the Magazine 
3/04/14
Don Van Natta Jr.

  At Penn State, buddies dubbed him Mr. State College because he projected a squeaky-clean image. But some who knew him then insist it was a facade. "He always kept up this appearance of the star quarterback, the model guy," says a close friend from those days. "But he was far from it." 

According to several of his classmates and teammates, McQueary developed a compulsive gambling habit at Penn State. He bet and lost thousands of dollars on poker and sports wagering, mostly on pro football, though he also bet, several of his former teammates say, on Nittany Lions games. One former teammate specifically recalls that Big Red bet and lost on his own team in a November 1996 game against Michigan State at Beaver Stadium. With McQueary serving as a backup on the sideline, favorite PSU won on a late field goal 32-29 but didn't cover the eight-point spread. 

As his losses mounted, McQueary owed thousands of dollars to a bookie, a debt that was eventually erased by his father, several people say. A college friend recalls urging McQueary to slow down. "It got pretty bad," the friend says, "and it just kept snowballing and snowballing. He was very impulsive." 

Whether Paterno or his assistants were aware of McQueary's gambling isn't known, but several teammates and former coaches say they doubt it. By all accounts, McQueary was fooling fans across Happy Valley -- and pulling the wool over on Paterno. "I love Joe to death," says a woman who worked for years in the football office. "But in a lot of ways, he was clueless."

Shortly after this ESPN report Deadspin joined in with this on 03/05/14

In 1995, Mike McQueary threw a touchdown late in garbage time of a Penn State blowout over Rutgers. Then-Rutgers coach Doug Graber and Joe Paterno got into a shouting match after the game because Graber thought Paterno was running up the score. The touchdown put the 20-point-favorite Nittany Lions up 59-34. None of this is interesting at all but for a tiny anecdote about McQueary's gambling habit while enrolled at Penn State, buried in ESPN's profile on the Penn State whistleblower.

 Any late score can seem like more than a coincidence when it takes money out of your pocket, and sports betting is full of conspiracy theorists, but this is at least interesting. A Penn State alum, who was there during McQueary's playing days, told BettingTalk.com that he recalled hearing rumors about McQueary's gambling, but never believed them. Then he read Van Natta, Jr.'s story and remembered the Rutgers game.

 It sounds good, but that's how these things work. There's never a smoking gun—the absence of which you can use as proof that nothing is rigged or proof that everything is rigged really well—and always another explanation, but this is more than your typical crazy-play-allows-team-to-cover-late story. This is a guy with an alleged gambling problem—including betting on his own team—coming in for mop-up duty and immediately covering the spread with a 42-yard touchdown pass in a game that was over.

It "doesn't take a Rocket Scientist" as Mike McQueary said to his father and Dr. Dranov that night in Feb 2001 to figure out that rumors this specific are completely deadly to anyone on a coaching job search. No university is going to offer a person accused of betting on his own school's games with much less evidence than is available on ESPN and Deadspin.

And to top it off even THE NEW YORK TIMES got into the act: 

McQueary's 42-yard touchdown pass to Chris Campbell, 58 seconds from the end of Penn State's bizarre 59-34 victory over Rutgers at Giants Stadium, led to an angry exchange between Doug Graber, the Rutgers coach, and Penn State's Joe Paterno. 

Suddenly, Penn State's 20th consecutive victory, and the types of defensive lapses that could eventually derail a second straight trip to the Rose Bowl, were overshadowed by a quarrelsome handshake. Paterno had to be restrained from pursuing Graber after the Rutgers coach made a parting remark. 

Afterward, Graber chose not to talk about the margin of victory -- which didn't exceed the Las Vegas point spread of 19 1/2 to 20 points until the final score -- or the controversial touchdown, and his players followed his lead. Paterno explained that the last pass was to go to the tight end and was not designed to produce a score. "Doug was upset, and he has a right to be," Paterno said.

 When ESPN and Deadspin have stories like this from the Winter of 2014 over 30 months ago and just two years after McQueary was not hired by Paterno replacement Bill O'Brien, it's not that difficult to comprehend why jobs were not flooding into his inbox. If these stories surfaced in early 2014 it's quite likely that rumors of these events were surfacing long before since that NYT piece on the Rutger's game was Sept. 1995.

When doing a coaching search it's certain that the 'grapevine' for input is heavy with fruit. These coaches interact with 100's of players and other coaches. As big as NCAA football is the aspect of fraternity and community is exceptionally strong. Teammates have special bonds and little can be hidden in such a glass fishbowl.

The only question, one might ask, is why the PSU defense has not yet played these reports as part of their defense. But we are only in the first quarter and there is a long way to go in a trial estimated to go on for 2 weeks. I look for the long ball of betting to come when the defense wants a maximum effect for their winning score in the second half. Once PSU is in the RedZone the odds are 5 to 1 we will see this play develop and 10 to 1 it will win the game for the Nittany Lion defense. Any takers? Mike?