Mike McQueary

BELLEFONTE — Joe Paterno was “very unselfish.” Tim Curley is “a good man.”

But as an institution, Mike McQueary said, Penn State University “threw me under the bus” after he emerged as the central witness in the case against Jerry Sandusky and three university officials charged with covering up the former football coach’s sexual abuse of children.

Testifying Friday in a Centre County courtroom, McQueary said he was caught off-guard in 2011, when his testimony against Sandusky also resulted in charges against the administrators and eventually ended the career of Paterno, the school’s iconic coach.

In the tumult that gripped campus after Sandusky’s arrest, McQueary said the school, his community and even the prosecutors he helped build a case all turned their backs on him.

“I just wanted some kind of support and some guidance,” he said. “No one stood up and said, ‘Here’s a guy who tried to do the right thing and stepped up.’ At no time did someone say, ‘Hey listen, this guy reported a pedophile.’”

His testimony capped the fifth day of trial in his whistle-blower suit against the university. All week, a string of school officials and McQueary’s former bosses in the university’s athletics department had testified about the circumstances that led to the former assistant football coach’s ouster from his job.

In more than six hours on the witness stand Friday, McQueary shared glimpses of the deep betrayal he still feels from his alma mater and the avid Penn State fans who turned against him.

“I’m not a perfect person. I didn’t handle this situation perfectly,” he said. “But I did a good thing. I’m a darn good person.”

He recounted the story that thrust him into the spotlight five years ago — about the February 2001 evening he spotted Sandusky sexually assaulting a boy in a Penn State locker room shower.

He recalled again how he reported what he saw — first to Paterno, later to Tim Curley, then the school’s athletic director, and its vice president, Gary Schultz.

He testified in the same calm and confident tones he displayed during Sandusky’s 2012 trial and at pretrial hearings in the still-pending child-endangerment case against Curley, Schultz and former Penn State President Graham Spanier. Lawyers for each were in the courtroom Friday, listening for discrepancies in McQueary’s testimony.

It was only in discussing the wreckage the Sandusky scandal had made of his life that the 6-foot-5 former Nittany Lion quarterback showed flashes of emotion. McQueary choked up while discussing how gracious his hero, Paterno, was even after it became clear his allegations about Sandusky would end the coach’s career.

“He said, ‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’” McQueary told jurors. “He was very unselfish about all of it. He was good to me.”

The assistant said Paterno also told him to be wary of the administration.

McQueary is seeking $4 million in lost wages and says the university undermined his credibility, making it difficult for him to find new work.

Divorced and forced to move back home with his parents, he says he has applied for dozens of coaching jobs and sought potential new careers as a golf pro and in medical device sales, but can’t get hired.