Jimmy Kennedy on Jerry Sandusky: 'I just thought he loved kids'

Jimmy Kennedy wasn’t just a player at Penn State under Jerry Sandusky. He wasn’t only recruited by the defensive coordinator to play in Happy Valley. No, he was also an interm for Sandusky’s Second Mile program that helped underprivileged youth and, according to charges, may have been a vehicle for Sandusky to find young victims whom he sexually abused.

“I was out there placing kids and setting up activities,” Kennedy, now a Giants defensive tackle, said on Wednesday of his role in the program. “In my head I think about times where I’ve been around Jerry and maybe something like that has happened. I just thought he loved kids and that he just had a genuine passion for it. I thought he shared the same passion (as I did). It hurts to hear all this stuff.”

Kennedy, who is coming off a four-game suspension by the NFL for violating the performance enhancing-substances policy, said there were “no signs, nothing weird or anything like that.”

Looking back now, though, he’s able to at least piece some of what happened during his tenure there.

“When we were at school we didn’t know that Jerry had a D.A. drop the case or whatever and all that other stuff in ’98,” Kennedy said. “But I know that in ‘99 he was done. So whether he was guilty or not, the attention that he may have brought to the program, I’m quite sure Coach Paterno handled it. I didn’t understand why he retired at the time. Now looking back on it, it’s like: Hold on, maybe that had something to do with it.”

Kennedy said he does not agree with the school’s decision to fire Paterno. It was Paterno who helped him get through college and into the NFL after he was a troubled youth.

“When I went in there I was a knucklehead and falling out,” he said. “He instills his characters on you. He wants you to conform to the program … He expects things to be done the right way, the Penn State way. And it hurts because the stuff that’s coming out isn’t the Penn State way.”