Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the recent NCAA sanctions against Penn State University a reaction “to public” opinion during a radio appearance Friday, according to Think Progress.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of folks at Penn State and they say, ‘you’re just gonna have to wait for the criminal trial of these two guys at Penn State,’” Santorum said on KSKY-AM. “I think there is going to be a whole new line set on what really went on there.”

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Earlier this week, the NCAA fined the school $60 million and barred it from post-season play for the next four years and more than 100 wins were also deleted from the school’s record as part of a series of punishments after a report by ex-FBI director Louis Freeh concluded that several top university officials worked to cover up former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s various sexual assault crimes over the course of 15 years.

Sandusky himself was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts of child abuse last month.

Santorum said that after reading Freeh’s report, he was concerned that “a lot of the conclusions in the Freeh report aren’t matched by the evidence that they presented.”

Last year, Santorum, a Penn State alumnus, told ABC News he did not recall ever meeting Sandusky, even though he sponsored the coach for a “Congressional Angels in Adoption” award.

“He ran a very respected charity who did a lot of work for kids in trouble,” Santorum said at the time. “I had a lot of friends who were on his board and spoke highly of him, so it seemed to me to be pretty natural. But obviously it was a huge mistake.”

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Listen to Santorum’s statements on KSKY, posted by ThinkProgress on July 27, below: