One of the senior investigators from Louis Freeh’s investigation into Penn State says that the process was fair and independent, despite critics who have accused Freeh’s team of collaborating with the NCAA.
Omar McNeill discusses this and other aspects of the post-Sandusky scandal investigation in a lengthy deposition hearing for the now-settled lawsuit between two Pennsylvania elected officials and the NCAA.
This hearing is the latest in a series of depositions that have recently trickled into the public eye. StateCollege.com obtained McNeil’s deposition from multiple sources, including transparency advocate Ryan Bagwell of the Penn State Sunshine Fund.
McNeill, who gave his testimony in December 2014, acknowledges the university-sanctioned Freeh report was widely criticized after its July 2012 release for various reasons: perceived bias, lack of independence, and missing testimonies from relevant parties.
“[The criticisms] were largely inaccurate, and most importantly they don’t support in any way any suggestion that the report was not thorough, that it did not reach an appropriate conclusion based on the evidence we had,” McNeill says. “It certainly did not in any way support the claim that the investigation was done in anything other than an independent manner.”
The Freeh report ultimately concluded that several top Penn State administrators hid knowledge of Jerry Sandusky’s crimes from the public. The report also criticizes what Freeh describes as a football-centric culture that valued an athletics program over the welfare of children.
During the course of the now-settled lawsuit with the NCAA filed by Pennsylvania State Senator Jake Corman and Treasurer Rob McCord, the two state officials implied that the NCAA shaped the outcome of the Freeh report to give them a foundation for sanctioning Penn State. To support this claim, they pointed to regular updates that the NCAA and the Big Ten athletic conference received from Freeh’s investigative team through the investigation.
McNeill says that shortly after Freeh’s law firm was hired by Penn State in November 2011, NCAA Chairman Mark Emmert reached out to Freeh “to have Judge Freeh permit the NCAA to receive information or updates regarding the investigation.” Taking the issue of independence seriously, McNeill says the Freeh team approached Penn State officials for their thoughts on the request. Only after Penn State gave permission did Freeh’s team agree to provide updates to the NCAA.
McNeill says that maintaining investigatory independence was important because “Judge Freeh and the rest of the members of [the law firm] who were engaged in the matter understood that the engagement likely would result in a significant amount of publicity at some point and that there would be a number of people questioning the report when it was completed.”
The updates they provided the NCAA and Big Ten initially began as weekly conference calls, but grew shorter and more infrequent as the investigation progressed. McNeill says the Freeh investigators never provided any information of substance during these calls, and would only discuss the general timeline for how the case was progressing.
The NCAA did provide potential questions for interviews and possible terms with which to search Penn State’s data systems, but McNeill says these did not shape the investigation. He has no recollection of using the NCAA’s suggested questions, and says that search terms provided were all fairly obvious terms that clearly related to the investigation that would have been used anyway. He also adds that the NCAA was not permitted to view the report before it was released to the public.
McNeill says the NCAA did provide a presentation on NCAA bylaws, but adds that this did not influence the investigation. He says they listened to the presentation out of courtesy, but that Penn State’s potential violations of NCAA bylaws was not “a specific focus” of the investigation.
“Whether NCAA bylaws had been violated was not within our remit,” McNeill says. “It was not something that we were engaged to do.”
After the report was released, McNeill says he was contacted by NCAA Chief Legal Officer Donald Remy, who asked why the report did not mention lack of institutional control at Penn State. McNeill’s answer was simple: Just like the question of NCAA bylaws, institutional control was not something they were hired to look at.
“There was no collusion on the part of Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan or the Freeh Group or any of the investigators or lawyers engaged by Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan and the NCAA,” McNeill says. “Or anyone else, for that matter.”
