BELLEFONTE — Connections to Penn State weren’t necessarily keeping prospective jurors from being chosen Tuesday to decide former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s fate on child sexual abuse charges.

After nine of the 12 main jurors were seated, their ranks included a longtime football season ticket holder, a rising senior in the university, a man with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the university and a soil sciences professor who retired after 37 years there.

The first day of jury selection showed the strength of Sandusky’s and Penn State’s links to their rural central Pennsylvania community, and the presiding judge indicated that those connections wouldn’t by themselves be enough to keep them from being selected.

The jurors and four alternates could be selected as early as today, with opening statements not scheduled to begin until Monday. Sandusky is fighting dozens of criminal charges that he abused 10 boys over a 15-year period.

In the first questioning of 40 prospective jurors, about half said they or immediate family members worked at Penn State or were university retirees. One woman rented apartments to college students. Four knew Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach. Two knew his wife.

Sandusky’s lawyer won the right to have jurors chosen from the local community, and prosecutors had concerns that Centre County might prove to be nearly synonymous with Penn State. Sandusky had helped build the football team’s reputation as a defensive powerhouse known as Linebacker U and his arrest toppled Joe Paterno from the head coaching position just months before his death from cancer.

One of the first jurors to be seated wasn’t just a season ticketholder since the 1970s: She said John McQueary — a possible trial witness and the father of a key witness — once worked with her husband.

When Sandusky’s lawyer sought to have her removed for cause, Judge John Cleland signaled he would need more grounds.

“We’re in Centre County. We’re in rural Pennsylvania,” the judge said, noting that such connections “can’t be avoided.”