Penn State running back Silas Redd met with USC head coach Lane Kiffin for three hours Thursday in Connecticut, and a source said "it went really well." Redd, Penn State's leading rusher last season, is intrigued by the chance to compete for a national championship.

The NCAA has fined Penn State $60 million, issued a four-year bowl ban and vacated wins from 1998 to 2011. The punishments were handed down on Monday morning in response to the Freeh report, which detailed how the university worked to cover up football assistant Jerry Sandusky's child sex abuse. The decision to vacate wins means Joe Paterno no longer holds the record for all-time victories.

The University of North Carolina has admitted that Hakeem Nicks was ineligible when he played his final season at the school in 2008. According to NCAA documents, Nicks received improper academic help in spring 2008 from a tutor. Nicks, one of the stars of New York's Super Bowl run last season, could not be reached for comment, but his agent, Peter Schaffer, said, "We have no knowledge of that whatsoever. It's low on the totem pole of relevant issues."

Matt Barkley shuffled a lot of NFL Draft boards when he decided to return to USC for his senior season. Barkley said Tuesday he "had confidence" he would have been the No. 2 overall draft pick, essentially bumping out Robert Griffin III as the second quarterback taken in April. "I had confidence that I was going to go high," Barkley said on The Dan Patrick Show. "It wasn't really a question of that, as to why I came back."

Joe Paterno and other senior officials "concealed critical facts" about Jerry Sandusky's child abuse because they were worried about bad publicity, according to an internal investigation by former FBI director Louis Freeh. The 267-page report released Thursday is the result of an eight-month inquiry by Freeh. The report concluded that Paterno, president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade." "In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at the university -- Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley -- repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse," the report added.