From the folks who give us Craig James . . .

ESPN apparently castigated Joe Paterno for what they did on the Syracuse allegations 8 years ago. What dickheads. "ESPN says it did not notify authorities of the allegations because Davis had gone to the Syracuse police in 2002 and been told the statute of limitations had expired. (In New York, the statute of limitations is five years.) "So we were fully under the impression that the police had been made aware of the story and had decided not to pursue it," Doria said. Fast forward eight years. Prompted by the Penn State abuse scandal, a friend of Davis' came forward to corroborate his story one day after Paterno was fired. During the next two weeks, two more men accused Bernie Fine of molesting them. The second prompted federal prosecutors to obtain a warrant to search Fine's house. On Nov. 27, the Post-Standard and ESPN, having obtained a baseline of Laurie Fine's voice that allowed them to verify the tape's authentication, felt they had enough information to publish stories about the 2002 phone conversation between Davis and Fine. Now ESPN and the Post-Standard find themselves in a situation eerily similar to the one that got Paterno fired and earned him a visceral beating from the media -- including ESPN. "This wasn't a case of Paterno choosing to ignore allegations of booster payments to a player or improper grade changes by a professor," ESPN.com's Mark Schlabach wrote the day of Paterno's firing. "Paterno's inaction allegedly involved one of the most heinous crimes a person can commit -- the rape of a child. While Paterno has not been accused of legal wrongdoing -- authorities have said he cooperated during the investigation – he is guilty of gross indifference, if nothing else. Morally, Paterno should have done more …" See at: