“No party interfered with, or attempted to influence, the findings in this report.”

— The Freeh report

Nine days after Penn State officials announced the hiring of former FBI director Louis Freeh to lead the “independent” investigation into the university’s actions in regard to the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal, Freeh received a request.

Mark Emmert wanted to chat.

That was Nov. 30, 2011. And according to a slew of emails filed Tuesday with Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court, chat both sides did.

Over and over again. About myriad of topics having to do with Penn State’s response to Sandusky’s monstrous actions and the response of both the university’s upper leadership and its legendary head football coach, Joe Paterno.

A get-together between the general counsels of both the NCAA and Freeh’s team occurred a week later. Freeh’s top assistant asking for guidance from the Freeh team on a letter the NCAA wanted to send to Penn State on Dec. 19. A vast list of questions the NCAA sent to Freeh on Dec. 28, demanding information about Penn State’s football culture. An “educational session” conducted by the NCAA for the Freeh team held over video chat for two hours on Jan. 7, 2012.

Meeting after meeting. Conference call after conference call. All leading up to the release of the Freeh report in July of 2012 that provided the hammer for Emmert, the NCAA’s embattled president, and his minions to levy punishments unprecedented in both financial and athletic scope just days later.

Seems like a lot of consultation between two parties for an “independent” investigation.

The emails that became public Wednesday were part of court documents filed by lawyers for state Sen. Jake Corman, R-State College, and state Treasurer Rob McCord against the NCAA over where the $60 million fine the governing body of collegiate athletics slapped on Penn State should be doled out.

Given what has become known in the last few weeks, it’s amazing the NCAA is still standing so firmly behind the idea that Penn State’s fine money should go to victims of child sexual abuse all over the nation, and not just Pennsylvania. After all, the contents of the emails that have been released in the last few weeks in regard to this suit have made the NCAA, Emmert and his executives look like heavy-handed bullies who took advantage of the most embarrassing situation in which any university in history has found itself. Everyone knew the NCAA needed a resounding victory in the public eye, and the public cheered Emmert every step of the way when those sanctions were announced.

But it’s one thing to deliver the finishing blow. It’s another to put the brass knuckles on before you throw it.

Sure, the emails released this week don’t exactly draw a direct line indicating the NCAA told Freeh what to investigate — although, questions about the football culture at Penn State, which the emails showed the NCAA inquired about at length, became a central theme of the Freeh report. That said, there is certainly enough in these findings alone to ask serious questions about how independent Freeh wanted to be in this investigation, and why the NCAA simply couldn’t keep its bulbous nose out of the way.

Interfered with? That may remain to be seen. Attempted to influence? That’s a different story.

Combine these emails with the ones released last week, indicating at least some in the NCAA’s hierarchy had reservations they were overstepping their bounds punishing the Nittany Lions at all, for the breaking of a law nobody could pinpoint with any more certainty than loose speculation. It makes it difficult to trust any of it.

Difficult to trust Freeh’s report wasn’t somewhat intentionally incomplete, if not exactly what the NCAA wanted.

Difficult to trust whether the NCAA’s motives were punitive at best, an attempt to make itself look like the tough guy that wouldn’t stand for the type of garbage — big money, powerful coaches, the image of gridiron greatness at all costs — it always stood for before and has continued to stand by since.

It’s so fitting that on Wednesday, the day ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” first reported the contents of the recent court filings, the main story on ESPN’s college football website was not the report. It was a feature on coach Nick Saban’s posh office at the University of Alabama, an interactive photo that details where the great man keeps his championship rings, a view of his engraved desk and a look at where he hangs his straw hat.

Maybe next week, a look inside his more than 8,700 square foot house that a group of Alabama boosters paid off for him last month — while he coached a group of unpaid players for $7 million a year — would be interesting.

The NCAA and Louis Freeh can talk about football culture all they want. But at least for the NCAA’s part, it never looked in a mirror. Emmert condemned Penn State for allowing football to become too big because it was convenient to do so, while willfully ignoring it everywhere else because doing something wasn’t convenient.

And Penn State is the one that needed an integrity monitor?

DONNIE COLLINS covers Penn State football for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com and follow him on Twitter @psubst.