Bernie Fine Allegations: I Hope ESPN Isn't Playing A Dangerous Game

Haha amen, brother.

How is the statute of limitations expired if the guy says he was abused until he was 27? The statute might limit sexual abuse of a minor to 15 years after their 18th birthday. What about sexual assault against an adult.

But that being said, assuming the statute of limitations is expired for all potential charges involving this one alleged vidtim, there are only two things to be gained

1) Expose a sexual predator to encourage other victims to come forward.
2) Perform a character assassination with the intent of filing a civil suit ($$$)

any allegations of acts which DO fall within the SOL. If they don’t, they’re no better than State College P.D. What I wonder is if they looked into the issue of chargeable acts in 2003. If they didn’t they surely could have…

All of that said, I don’t know that I’ve read anywhere that the PD did zero inquiry in 2003. All I’ve read is that according to Jones he was told there was nothing they could do. Can anyone confirm that the SPD did NOT investigate at all?

It’s not even the top story of the day on ESPN. Of course what happened last night in Oklahoma is very sad.

Why would they want to screw with it?

Conspiracy theories collapsing…

probably couldnt get into Newhouse.

If (when?) the allegations are proven false, the university will want this to go away as quickly as possible. Getting involved in a slander suit with ESPN/Disney/The Evil Empire won’t help that.

That and, as much as it’s clear that Schwartz thinks Fine is guilty, they haven’t reported anything false. No one at ESPN has stated unequivocally that Fine did these things. They’ve merely said that Davis and Lang are making accusations. All of the ESPN reporting is 100% true (despite the thinly veiled implications), which precludes them from liability.

Courts in general will stand by a media outlet’s right to report news, even if that news ends up being untrue. Sure, the gatekeepers at ESPN should be more responsible than to run with a story based on, “this guy and his brother said…”, but I doubt it’d be ground for any kind of legal action against ESPN. If it were, then its unlikely they would have let it go to air. I’d be willing to bet that them squashing the story in 2003 had much less to do with potential legal action than it did with journalistic integrity. Apparently whomever is in charge at ESPN has none.

If anyone is liable, it’s Davis and Lang, but any lawyer will tell you that the first rule of tort law is that you don’t sue people who don’t have any money. I’m inclined to think that’s the case wit Davis and Lang.

Schwarz keeps relying on “Jones said…” etc. It’s all on the accuser(s) if the accusations are found to be untrue. And if that’s the case, good luck collecting a judgment.

He said that Lang called Davis and said the PSU scandal made him emotional about being abused by Bernie and what could he do about it. Davis said, “We can call ESPN, I have the reporter’s number.”

I don’t think anyone would’ve put as much into this story as ESPN has. They’re making a bigger story out of this than they should, especially considering there’s so many holes in the accuser’s story.

That said, fuck ESPN. They were a shitty network before this, now they disgust me. I refuse to watch ESPN from here on out.

Any and all outlets were going to report this story based on the reopening of the investigation. Again: This is a huge story, especially given the timing, and any outlet was going to pick it up. ESPN just happened to be on this in 2003, so they had a leg up.

The “reputation” of ESPN is now based solely on this hive mind amongst blogs and blog comments and Twitter and Deadspin and where ever else on the interwebs that we must shit on every and all things that they do. To be fair, they’re not victims; they’ve definitely made some mistakes in their coverage. But regardless of what or how they cover things, at this point, everyone’s going to find something to attack, because they’re the biggest thing going and yeah their NFL shows suck and so fuck them they’re the worst and making everything up to sell newspap— oh, right.

Take the Penn State thing, for example. Say ESPN dispatched a fleet of cameramen and whatnot from the start. Would we be shitting on them for overdoing it? And couldn’t we say that maybe they didn’t dispatch the fleet because they wanted to make sure not to overdo it on such a sensitive story? I haven’t diligently kept up with things at Happy Valley from the very start, so I honestly don’t know. But the point is, it doesn’t matter, because people were going to find a way to blame them for something one way or the other. We’re literally questioning their credibility now because they didn’t have enough cameras during the riot so we had to change the channel to CNN for a bit.

So if we’re going to ask for patience in this story, to make sure no one overreacts and condemns a man who very well may be innocent, why can’t we do the same for ESPN? If ESPN fucks up, then skewer them. If Fine turns out to be guilty, skewer him. And I know it’s tough to sit here and wait for things to play out without commenting on something and expressing anger in some fashion, especially given the way 24/7 news cycles now work. But I for one plan on waiting for all the facts and information before needlessly bashing anything or anyone.

(Also, this has nothing to do with me writing at a UConn blog. None. Would say the same thing at a, i don’t know, Kansas State blog.)

This is on them, for better or worse.

Boeheim just said that he recalls Davis traveling with the team. So I guess now JB is lying too.

Yet I’ve only seen it being mentioned twice.

Because it makes too much sense. And things that make sense are usually ignored by people.

Is did Davis, in fact, go to New Orleans in 1987? That’s the only time that I’ve seen a specific time and place mentioned. It’s also a claim that can be factually checked. Did he have a plane ticket? The implication was that, even though Davis was a guest of Fine’s, they didn’t share a room. He would have been 18 in ‘87, so did he have his own room room registered under his name? If not, who did he bunk with, if not Fine? It’s also a significant event that is unlikely to be forgotten, as opposed to the other alleged instances. Davis specificallly said that he was abused during the 1987 Final Four. If it can be proved that he wasn’t even there, then, well, his creditbility goes straight down the shitter (sorry Sean).

So fear of airplanes was a valid reason not to hang with the team, but fear of being violated wasn’t? Gimme a break. I’m done with this ‘story’, and BTW, ESPN can bite me. We can talk again when something resembling evidence or corroboration arise…which after twenty-something years seems highly unlikely.

Everything they say is yanked out of a Lifetime movie. No actual specific event or day.