Mike McQueary Won't Coach Against Nebraska Due to Threats

Penn State wide receivers coach Mike McQueary won't coach against Nebraska on Saturday due to safety concerns, according to the school.

The school had previously announced that McQueary -- at the center of the scandal at the school -- would coach in the game, but said on Thursday night that the coach had received multiple threats since the allegations against Jerry Sandusky became public.

Due to multiple threats made against Assistant Coach Mike McQueary, the University has decided it would be in the best interest of all for Assistant Coach McQueary not to be in attendance at Saturday's Nebraska game, the statement said.

The threats stem from McQueary witnessing Sandusky allegedly raping a 10 year-old boy in 2002 and his decision to not stop the heinous act. McQueary immediately left the facilities and called his father to ask him what he should do, according to Grand Jury testimony.

McQueary would later meet with long-time coach Joe Paterno, who was fired this Wednesday, to tell the coach about what he saw. But although Paterno would later pass along the information to athletic director Tim Curley, no one ever informed the authorities of the allegations.

The lack of action led Penn State's Board of Trustees to dismiss Paterno and President Graham Spanier on Wednesday, while allowing Curley to go on administrative leave while he fights criminal charges.

Many have now called for the school to also dismiss McQueary for neither stopping Sandusky in the act nor going to the authorities to report the incident. One of the big questions directed to him, as was directed to Paterno, is how could he allow Sandusky allegedly molest young boys?

There could be multiple answers to why McQueary didn't do more with this situation. First could be a personal connection to the Sandusky family -- McQueary was high school and college football teammates with Sandusky's son, Jon. It is unclear how close McQueary was with Jon or with the elder Sandusky, but it could have factored into his decision to not break up the alleged shower incident.

The other could be that he was promised a promotion if he stayed quiet and didn't inform authorities of what he saw. He was only a graduate assistant in 2002, but by 2004 he was a full-time assistant coach for the Nittany Lions. At a football powerhouse that is a meteoric rise for a young assistant, but it could have simply been due to his strong performance as a coach.

Interim coach Tom Bradley said on Thursday that the decision wasn't up to him whether McQueary would coach, but CBS Sports' Gregg Doyel posited that Penn State might be retaining the coach in order to not open itself up to a whistleblower lawsuit. According to Doyel, the coach could be protected under Pennsylvania whistleblower laws and Penn State could be found liable of violating those laws if they fired him.