It turns out the independent Penn State investigation wasn't so independent.
Court documents filed Wednesday and first obtained by ESPN's Outside the Lines revealed that the NCAA "provided an investigative blueprint" for the supposedly independent investigation former FBI director Louis Freeh conducted during the school's well-publicized Jerry Sandusky controversy in 2011-12.
The ensuing "Freeh Report" was then used as the basis for the NCAA's punitive sanctions of the PSU football program, which included a loss of scholarships, a $60 million dollar fine, and a four-year ban from bowl season (the bowl ban was reduced earlier this year).
A Pennsylvania State Senator by the name of Jake Corman has been suing the NCAA in regard to where that $60 million in fine funds should be allocated. Today's documents -- and their contentions therein -- are a part of Corman's legal challenge.
"Clearly the more we dig into this, the more troubling it gets," Corman was quoted by ESPN. "There clearly is a significant amount of communication between Freeh and the NCAA that goes way beyond merely providing information. I'd call it coordination ... Clearly, Freeh went way past his mandate. He was the enforcement person for the NCAA. That's what it looks like. I don't know how you can look at it any other way. It's almost like the NCAA hired him to do their enforcement investigation on Penn State."
"At a minimum, it is inappropriate," he continued. "At a maximum, these were two parties working together to get an outcome that was predetermined."
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