pennsylvania. sara, people think that excuse is pretty flimsy. reporter: yeah, don, what happened yesterday at the announcement for the new head football coach, the one that will replace interim coach tom bradley, who replaced joe paterno when he was fired just a few days after the jerry sandusky scandal began to unfold, so rodney erickson was asked this question by reporters at an intimate question-and-answer session after the announcement. he was asked the question, how could penn state officials, such as yourself, be caught so off guard when this was news that, you know, people in pennsylvania were talking about, and that was re-published in several publications back in march. he said what he has said all along. he said, i did not know penn state was involved in this scandal until i read the grand jury report in november. he then refused to follow up a question about the patriot-news article in march. he went to another reporter. his press secretary basically said one
overwhelmed. i spent almost the past decade in solitary confinement. so i m not used to being around anyone, much less this many people. it s kind of overwhelming. it s not perfect. it s not perfect by any means. but at least it brings closure to some areas and some aspects. you know, we can still bring up new evidence. we can still continue an investigations we ve been doing. we can still try to clear our names. the only difference is we can do it from the outside instead of sitting in prison and do it. even when you re in prison, you have to worry about your own safety. it doesn t matter what crime it is, you got to worry about your safety regardless. jason, how about you? i didn t worry about someone else would do. i worried about people who loved me and care about me and trust. we can t live our lives in fear. this was not justice. in the beginning, we told nothing but the truth that we were innocent and they sent us to prison for the rest of our lives for it. then