The Seven Stages Of Phil Knight Not Knowing What The Hell He's Talking About

The NCAA and Louis Freeh have found spots on Phil Knight's ever-changing shit list. One group never on the list? The Paternos; Knight's feelings for the late Joe Paterno and his family have never wavered. Rather, he's just struggled with accepting those feelings depending on who happened to have released a report on a given day about Penn State's role in covering up Jerry Sandusky's systematic sexual abuse of children.

When Joe Paterno died shortly after he was unceremoniously fired by Penn State, Knight was a defiant supporter at his memorial service. When the Freeh report came out, Knight was bummed out. Now, after the Paternos released their report on the Freeh Report, he's back on the Paterno bandwagon and pissed at the NCAA.

With the release of the report by the King and Spalding law firm, including analysis by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former FBI profiler James Clemente, it is clear that the findings of the Freeh Report were unjustified and unsubstantiated. When this tragic story first unfolded Joe cautioned all of us to slow down and carefully gather the facts before jumping to conclusions. We owed it to the victims, he said, to get to the truth. It was counsel we all should have followed. Additionally, The NCAA's actions are exposed as totally unwarranted. The NCAA acted outside its charter and rendered judgment absent any kind of investigation or judicial hearing. It was simply grandstanding.

Knight noted that he actually hadn't read the Freeh Report "in full" when he got all morose about Paterno's "missteps that led to heartbreaking consequences." It's worth further noting that in his statement to Outside the Lines Knight never says he read this latest report either. So unless someone comes back and does a self-serving report pointing out perceived inadequacies in Wick Sollers's report on the report, we might not know what Phil Knight really thinks. But, thanks to our handy Seven Stages Of Phil Knight (found below) we'll at least know he will be sad.

1. Anger 2. Pain 3. Just keep alternating those two until you get to seven, basically. Phil Knight doesn't know what the hell is going on.

Knight reverses course on Paterno [ESPN]