Penn State students flip CBS affiliate’s van after Paterno firing

Penn State students irate over Joe Paterno's firing flipped a CBS affiliate's van on Thursday, shortly after the board of trustees announced the ouster of the legendary 84-year-old coach in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the school.

The van, owned by WTAJ, was parked on the State College, Pa., campus when students surrounded the truck.

Police then used pepper spray to disperse the rioters. No employees were injured in the incident, the central Pennsylvania affiliate said.

You can watch the video of the incident below.

Meanwhile, Paterno's firing quickly became national news, which made for some awkward moments for cable news anchors with little or no knowledge about college football.

CNN's Isha Sesay, for instance, asked a correspondent if he knew when Penn State's next game would be. As sports fans know, most college football games are played on Saturday.

"In all fairness," Graham Watson wrote on Yahoo's Dr. Saturday blog, "Sesay doesn't work for a sports network. I'm sure [if] this story had something to do with the British phone hacking scandal, she would have been all over it."

One member of the media inadvertently caught in the scandal's fray has been Gerry Sandusky, sports director at Baltimore's NBC affiliate WBAL, whose name is one letter off from Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant football coach accused of sexually abusing children for more than a decade.

Gerry Sandusky says he's received hate mail and has gained close to 1,000 new Twitter followers thinking he's Jerry Sandusky.

"When you hear your name said on the news attached to a horrific crime, even though it's not a relative of yours, it's jarring," Sandusky said. "For years I've always had to introduce myself as Gerry with a 'G.' My mom decided to spell my name with a 'G.' Thank God she did."

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