Joe Pa

In 1975 I was a college freshman at Pennsylvania State University. I spent only a year there, but I couldn't help noticing that football was a big deal on that campus. Two years earlier the Nittany Lions had finished their season undefeated and won the Orange Bowl. But I was pre-med, and my curriculum didn't lend itself to football Saturdays. During my year there I never got close enough to Beaver Stadium to be able to recall what it looked like.

Joseph Vincent Paterno was still in his 40s then, but he had been head coach for a decade and had already collected five bowl victories. His career totals of bowl victories (24) and appearances (37) are records unlikely to be broken any time soon. I'll go out on a limb and say his Division I record of 409 career wins will likely stand through at least the rest of this century.

Paterno spent six decades in coaching at Penn State, having signed on as an assistant in 1950. He built a culture of success in which academic performance was regarded as equal in importance to what an athlete did between the sidelines. He consistently emphasized team over individual, as symbolized by Lions uniforms that had numbers but not names.

In a national culture obsessed with youth, it came as no surprise that many fans thought the grandfatherly Paterno might be getting too old to continue coaching successfully when the team hit a five-year slide, losing more than winning during the 2000-2004 seasons. There were many calls for his retirement. He finally said he would step down if things didn't turn around in 2005. That year the team went 11-1, winning the Big Ten title and the Orange Bowl. In 2006 Paterno was inducted into the college football Hall of Fame, turned 80, and kept right on coaching. The five years from 2005 through 2010 brought a record of 58-19, and few fans remained convinced that Joe was too old to continue as head coach. The term "living legend" has fit few men in organized athletics as well as when it has been worn by Joe Pa.

In 2002 Joe Paterno, in his mid-70s, was informed by Mike McQueary, a young graduate assistant, that McQueary had witnessed Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a ten-year-old boy in a shower in a university athletic facility. Sandusky, the former PSU defensive coordinator, had retired from that position in 1999 but had continued access to university facilities because of his involvement in youth programs. Paterno reported McQueary's information to university officials, including the athletic director and the administrator who oversaw the university police.

Accounts of how and why it took nine years for there to be a thorough investigation and a grand jury report are a bit hard to follow, and I certainly won't try to make sense of them here. No, what I want to do instead is tell you what troubles me about this story.

McQueary told the grand jury he was very specific, in his conversation with Paterno, about what he saw in the shower. Paterno says otherwise. Both have reasons for biased recall. Should we believe that a man in his mid-20s would describe what he saw in graphic detail to a man in his mid-70s? It is entirely possible that he did exactly that. But I am firmly in the camp of the skeptics on this one.

Should Paterno have taken the information he was given and gone directly to outside (not university) law enforcement? Joe now says that, in hindsight, he wishes he had done more. But that's the thing about hindsight: you never have it when you need it. He did what he was supposed to do and sent it to university higher-ups whose job it was to handle such problems.

Should McQueary have gone straight to outside law enforcement (not to Paterno)? He knew that Sandusky had been Paterno's friend and protégé. What would you have done in his place? I know my answer. There is plenty of blame to go around when we consider the tragedy of Sandusky's shocking behavior, extending over a period of years with an uncertain number of young victims.

If you've read my profile associated with this blog, you know I like to find fault with the work of professional journalists. And now I have a whole sector to go after: the sports writers, commentators, and pundits. It is very difficult to find a Paterno defender among them. When the university's Board of Trustees rejected Paterno's decision to retire after this season and instead abruptly fired him in a public relations damage-control move (that was stunningly ineffective), I heard no sports journalists even suggest the decision might have been hasty or an overreaction. Why? Well, no one wants to jeopardize his career by saying something that might label him as soft on child sexual abuse.

Just look at what happened to Franco Harris. The Steelers' superstar running back was born the year Paterno joined the PSU coaching staff and played for Paterno in college. Somewhere along the line Harris learned something about loyalty and courage under fire and suggested the Penn State Board of Trustees displayed a lack of both. For taking that stand, Franco was criticized by Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who demanded that Harris step down as chair of the board of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program.

Ravenstahl? Really? The same Ravenstahl who wasn't even born yet during the 1970s, when the Steelers, whose fans' affectionate names for the franchise included Franco's Army, were the best team that had ever stepped onto an NFL gridiron. The same Ravenstahl who became the youngest (and arguably least qualified) mayor in Pittsburgh history because the city council had made him Council President in a foolish compromise, and Mayor Bob O'Connor died in office. The same Ravenstahl who, in his five years as mayor, has been the subject of a remarkable number of controversies and criticisms surrounding his apparent lack of any sense of ethics. Biblical sayings in abundance (the ones about judging not and about casting the first stone, among others) apply to this buffoon.

Joseph Vincent Paterno gave six decades of his life to the Pennsylvania State University, helping to make its athletic programs not only successful but famous for character and integrity. The university board of trustees, amid swirling controversy and scandal, fired an 84-year-old legend because he didn't do enough after being informed of a very disturbing incident nearly a decade earlier. They did it because, in their view, letting him finish the season would have further tarnished the university's reputation.

I have often sighed and shaken my head when I've seen a football game end with a result different from what would have happened if the officials had not made a bad call late in the game. The Penn State board of trustees made a bad call. Yes, that is an understatement if ever there was one. Thank you to Franco Harris for telling us the honest truth about that.

And thank you to Joe Pa for giving your best to college football for six decades and inspiring generations of players, fans, and alumni.


Epilogue

And now (January 21, 2012), Joseph Vincent Paterno has been laid to rest. I believe he will be remembered for his many contributions to his university and to collegiate football and that Sandusky will ultimately be nothing more than a footnote. Joe has said he really didn't know how to handle the matter and turned it over to people he believed would take the appropriate steps. For that the PSU Board of Trustees dismissed him nearly a decade later - for PR purposes. May Joe rest in peace. May the Board of Trustees reflect upon their actions and struggle to find the peace they denied him in his final months.