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The frustrating thing about the truth is that it's not always what is easy or what we want.

I want to believe the women because there is so much evidence that there is so much abuse directed at them, so generally I do. Nonetheless, I know--as does any thinking person--that in any individual case the truth may be somewhat different. I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of accusers are truthful. I think the facts bear that out (surely there is some research on this point). I also believe there are instances (Aziz Ansari comes to mind) in which each party has a completely different understanding of what happened, despite experiencing the same event (shoot, this even happens to fans watching a football game). And finally, there are actual false accusations. Duke Lacrosse comes to mind, and much closer to home, SFIrish investigated just such an incident as an officer in the Army.

I very much doubt a woman just randomly threw a beer in someone's face, but what it took to encourage her to let fly could obviously be a lot less than an assault.

My wild speculation is that Hollis is going to be the one coming out of this the worst.  The fact that people I consider legitimate insiders, not just message board insiders, but guys who don't let stuff go anywhere online were surprised by a couple of these things, and how Dantonio handled the only two incidents that ESPN could actually lie him to having any knowledge to, mixed with Hollis' immediate resignation make me think he was running stuff from the ADs chair.  Either because he had the power to do so, or he wanted to give his coaches plausible deniability.  In a lot of ways that is far scarier to me.  Coaches are in the trenches, and a lot of things certain coaches have gotten swept up I think look a lot owrse from the outside than when you are in the moment.  The idea of an AD controlling certain things from that position makes me really uneasy, and if so, I don't know what the penalties for MSU would be, it's new territory, but I think they have to be harsh.  You can't let programs get by by making sure the individual sports aren't involved.  So how do you punish?  Something like a massive fine and an athletics department wide postseason ban?  Again, this is just my speculation, but gun to my head where this is going, that's where I'm leaning, to a department wide type penalty.

I'm still not sure what to think about this on MSU's end.  It sounds like police and whatnot were informed and investigated.  They chose not to file charges.  That is wholly different than not notifying anyone (re: PSU).  I'm not sure how hard I can hammer administration for basically following proper channels and getting the wrong result.  Maybe I'm missing something.

Actually, the police were notified in 1998, and chose not to prosecute after a brief investigation.

My wild speculation is that Hollis is going to be the one coming out of this the worst.  

My slightly more than two cents of elaboration on this point...
Background into the ESPN story.  There was a story a few years back about how at UF and FSU, football and basketball players were prosecuted at a far lower rate than when charges were brought against members of the student body as a whole.  ESPN wanted to investigate whether this was a UF/FSU problem, or a major college sports problem (I think we all know it's a pretty across the board thing, but you need proof).  MSU was one of the schools they picked as a comparison point, as another large state school.   That is where the brunt of this legwork came from.  The result of that was a 2015 story that concluded the MSU athletes faced the same prosecution rate as non-athletes, but that their findings were not totally conclusive because of redacted reports.  I believe the only new story in the new ESPN report were the 2 assaults last year, involving 4 players, all 4 were suspended immediately, and then were kicked off the team permanently, as soon as charges were filed, before their first court appearance.

So to the charges in the ESPN story

-5 incidents (3 assault, 2 sexual assualt) involving football players where no charges were filed, no evidence Dantonio was alerted

-1 incident (sexual assault) in 2007 involving football players, where nothing was ever reported to anyone, and was only discovered in 2014 when her parents read her diary, at which point police investigated

-2 2016 incidents (sexual assault) involving 4 football players, mentioned above, all suspended immediately, then kicked out, plus the firing of his top recruiter for not reporting the incident to Dantonio immediately, and trying to handle it himself

-Appling/Payne 2010 (Sexual assault) incident which was known, and investigated by both the DAs office, and the MSU Title IX, which led to nothing

-two Travis Walton incidents (one assault, one sexual assault), which occurred after he was done playing, while he was a student assistant.  One was pled down to littering due to conflicting witness reports.  The second of which, according to ESPN he was fired as soon as the accusation happened, even though that allegation went nowhere.  Oddly ESPN claims MSU fired him, Walton claims he wasn't in any official capacity and had always planned on just leaving when he graduated.

First, ESPN doesn't really state their thesis.  Is it that violence by MSU athletes is a problem?  Is it that MSU athletics is covering up?  Is it that MSU is coercing law enforcement in their handling?

For the first, we'd need a wider investigation, to get some sort of a comparison.  I agree any violence is too much.

Is it that MSU athletics is covering it up?  Of the 11 incidents mentioned above, the police were involved immediately every time, except the time where the incident wasn't discovered until reading her diary 7 years later, at which point it was investigated.

So I guess it has to be some sort of MSU/law enforcement coercion.  It seems odd considering their 2015 story says athletes and non-athletes were prosecuted at the same rate, and the only new incidents involved all 4 athletes being arrested, charged and kicked off the team, with the additional firing of a coach for mis-handling it.  Not sure how that has made things worse.  I think it has more to do with ESPN trying to give legs to a Nassar story, by giving it new legs.  That said, I agree MSU has a problem with handling these.  You don't have to take my word for it.  The Department of Education and an independent Pepper Hamilton investigation that were both focused on the school as a whole have said as much.  So if they are mis-handling cases at large, it stands to reason they are mis-handling these too.

But that brings me back to Hollis.  I don't think the Nassar thing was on him nearly enough for an immediate resignation.  I don't even think Simon's resignation was forced by MSU's bumbling of Nassar so much has badly they continued to bumble it while it was in the nation's eye.  I'm not sure that level of MSU-wide PR, and control over the Board of Trustees was coming down on the Athletic Director.  I think Hollis was 100% tied to this story.  And again, the facts as I've laid them out above, aren't enough to lose a job over.  11 incidents over the course of a decade, where the police were involved every time.  So there has to be something more there.  I would say the red flag to me is the lack of prosecution on all but the 2016 cases (9 of 11).  Again, none of the cases as of the 2015 ESPN report were prosecuted, and they said it was fine then, but that's where something smells to me.  They can't find any proof that MD knew, but they don't say one way or the other about the AD.  If he also didn't know, I see no reason to immediately resign over this.  So that's me speculating.

My questions going forward has to do with the 5 unreported football player incidents, and the Walton stuff.  (1) Did Dantonio or Hollis know about those 5 incidents?  Why did the victim decline to bring charges in those cases.  Even if charges weren't brought, was there enough that MSU should have still punished them from the football side?  (2) With the Walton incidents, why were the charges reduced?  What were those conflicting witness reports?  And what did Izzo think.  Maybe the attorneys are telling him to say absolutely nothing, but a statement of "I had a player on my team for four years, a captain, who was helping out after using up his eligibility.  I asked him, I trusted him, and the lack of charges brought backed up his story.  When he was accused a second time, I removed him from the team.  I regret trusting him the first time, and if I could go back I wish I hadn't, but based on our relationship, and the actions of the police, I felt comfortable at the time.  When it happened again, he had broken that trust."  Based on the facts, that seems like a perfectly reasonable statement to me.  But he hasn't made it.  Is it because they've told him to say absolutely nothing, or is it because it isn't true?  My gut feeling based on the silence, and Hollis' actions, is that he knew and did something well below board.

From a purely athletics standpoint, those are the two major questions I want answered.  From an MSU-wide standpoint, there are major, major issues.  Both in terms of leadership and handling of sexual assault.  While the public probably doesn't care about MSU aside from how they do on a football field/basketball court, those things are WAAAAAAY down the list for me.  MSU can appease the interwebz by having Dantonio and Izzo follow Simon and Hollis out the door, but if they think firing a couple of coaches fixes anything, they are wrong, and that's what scares me.  That MSU's PR is so bad right now, that the decisions moving forward are going to have more to do with fixing the image than fixing the problem, and we'll be right back here in 7 years.  To go with that, there are multiple facets to running a university, and the movement from within to purely promote a female faculty member to fix the sexual assault problem is very shortsighted.  Hire someone with a background there to do that job.  Give her that title, and give her power.  But the role of the President needs to be much broader than that, and with the spectrum of investigations coming MSU's way, a professor is nearly the last person who should be running those things.

I don't recall much divisiveness, I think most here found the backlash against PSU as a whole deplorable.  I also think maybe being a little more disconnected from it, you don't notice it as much.  I've seen far more vitriol towards MSU online than I did towards PSU, but it could be I'm more tuned into it, and it's the nature of the people I follow on social media are more apt to chime in on MSU than they were on PSU.
I think part of it is that I don't think we know enough yet with MSU.  PSU, Baylor and MSU are all getting lumped together, but really the issues were very different, aside from the fact that the underlying crime was sexual assault.  And I'm speaking just to the coaches here, Paterno, Briles and Dantonio/Izzo
The Paterno question was always did he have a moral obligation to do more than the bare minimum legally/professionally.  There nobody questioned that he did what he had to do, but did he do as much as he should have done?  Briles was actively hindering investigations by handling things internally rather than going to police, that's why there is almost no split on his treatment.
Here, as I posted above, we don't know.  We know they certainly didn't go as far as Briles, the police were involved every time.  But we also don't know what they knew, which brings us more into the Paterno realm.  If legally MSU dotted all the is and crossed all the ts, but the coaches still knew more and should have punished more internally, that's one question.  If they were in some way hindering investigations or suppressing potential charges, either at the coaches level or the administrators level, we are closer to the Briles realm

Great response, appreciate the thought you put into this.  And I think you're right - I'm not as sensitive and tuned into this as I was with Penn State, so there's definitely an angle to that.  The only thing I will disagree about is that there were definitely some on here (or the old board, I should say) who were calling to burn State College down.  Don't recall screen names, but it did happen.

I simply cannot believe that Art Briles isn't in jail.  I can't.  Then again, I also see that the state of Texas subpoenaed a few ex Baylor higher ups the other day.  But man, Baylor has gotten a massive amount of leniency to this that I simply can't understand.  

I actually supported Paterno until it became impossible to do. I also, from the start and through today, never believed it was an NCAA matter, but rather civil. I'll take that to my grave.

IF, and only IF, this MSU thing comes to show that kids were protected by Izzo and Dantonio for the sole purpose of keeping them eligible, I would say it's an NCAA matter. Until then, it's a civil matter and even still, has nothing to do with Nasser, unless a school-wide culture of turning the other way comes to light.

We have to wait and see what comes of all of this. There is no judgement to pass yet.

Please save me from giving ESfuPN a click. Thanks.