BELLEFONTE - Former Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary, tagged early as a villain in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case, got a large measure of vindication Thursday.

An eight-woman, four-man jury found Penn State guilty of defamation and misrepresentation in its handling of McQueary's eyewitness report against Sandusky in 2001, and ordered the payment of $7.3 million in damages.

It is believed to be one of the largest civil verdicts in Centre County history.

McQueary, who's been unemployed as a football coach since he was placed on leave by Penn State several days after Sandusky's November 2011 arrest, snapped his head down and stared at the courtroom floor as the jury forewoman delivered the jury's decision.

It was if the one-time wide receivers coach was letting his long-awaited, and some felt longshot, victory wash over him.

McQueary wasn't elaborating.

Both he and his attorney, Elliot Strokoff, left the courtoom without commenting shortly after court was dismissed.

Penn State attorney Nancy Conrad also declined comment, noting "the court has directed that there's to be no public comment."

About the verdict.

The jury found for McQueary on a defamation count that was tied to an early statement of support by then-President Graham Spanier for administrators Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, who had been charged with failing to report the 2001 incident to police and, years later, lying about what they knew and did to state investigators looking at Sandusky.

On that, they awarded $1.15 million in damages for lost wages and other factors.

They then found against Penn State on the misrepresentation count, awarding $1.15 in compensatory damages and then adding $5 million in punitive damages against the university.

All members of the jury left the courthouse annex building without commenting to reporters.

Thursday's verdicts, which came after about four hours of deliberation, are not the final word on the case.

A separate whistleblower charge levied by McQueary is being decided separately by Senior Judge Thomas Gavin and is still pending. Gavin indicated Thursday he will render his decision on that count within 30 days.

In closing arguments Thursday morning, Strokoff argued his client has effectively lost his career because of high Penn State officials' actions in 2001 to keep his eyewitness account of a sexual assault byJerry Sandusky from law enforcement.

"What Penn State has done to Mike McQueary is outrageous," Strokoff said. "He should not have been a scapegoat in this matter, and certainly not for five years."

Conrad said the evidence - including the now-infamous email thread between Curley. Schultz and Spanier - actually proves the point that McQueary's allegation was taken seriously.

And the administrators' collective decision to inform The Second Mile about the incident and bar Sandusky from bringing kids into PSU athletic facilities, she added, showed that actions were taken.

"They took the matter seriously. They saw that it was investigated. And they took appropriate action," Conrad said in her closing argument.

But the verdict shows jurors saw it differently.

Strokoff, pointed to then-Penn State counsel Wendell Courtney's initial advice, in a Sunday consultation with Schultz the day after McQueary took his story to Paterno, to report the incident to child welfare authorities.

"Nobody says that if on Feb. 11, 2001, if Gary Schultz had simply done what his lawyer said to do - report it - none of this would have happened," Strokoff said.

Apparently, the jury made that statement.

In order to find misrepresentation, the panel had to find that the Penn State administrators' likely believed that McQueary was reporting potential child abuse in 2001, and they had a duty to take it to police or child welfare officials.

By not doing so, the jury apparently found that McQueary was left exposed as a potential fall guy when the story broke 10 years later.

The university removed him from active coaching because of security concerns; it paid him his full salary while on leave through June 2012; and it paid an 18-month severance after deciding not to renew McQueary's contract, even though the university had legal grounds to refuse it.

"Any harm that Mike McQueary has suffered... is the result of his own failures," Conrad told the eight-woman, four-man jury in a biting summation.

"His failure to distinguish himself in college football. His failure to build a network that could help him with future job prospects. His failure to act on that night in February 2001, and the national media [scrutiny] that followed."

"It is not the actions of Penn State" that have prevented him from resuming his coaching career.

But jurors apparently were swayed by McQueary's emotional testimony last week.

In a full day on the stand, he presented himself as a flawed hero in the Sandusky case who, by doing more than nearly anyone else at Penn State to report Sandusky, only managed to become the first target for fans angered by the abrupt end the scandal brought to the Joe Paterno era.