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Paterno dead at 85
yahoo sports
STATE COLLEGE, Pa— Happy Valley was perfect for Joe Paterno, a place
where “JoePa” knew best, where he not only won more football games than
any other major college coach, but won them the right way: with
integrity and sportsmanship. A place where character came first,
championships second.
Behind it all, however, was an ugly secret that ran counter to
everything the revered coach stood for.
Paterno, a sainted figure at Penn State for almost half a century but
scarred forever by the child sex abuse scandal that brought his career
to a stunning end, died Sunday at age 85.
His death came just over two months after his son Scott announced on
Nov. 18 that his father had been diagnosed with a treatable form of
lung cancer. The cancer was found during a follow-up visit for a
bronchial illness. A few weeks later, Paterno broke his pelvis after a
fall but did not need surgery.
Paterno had been in the hospital since Jan. 13 for observation after
what his family called minor complications from his cancer treatments.
Not long before that, he conducted his only interview since losing his
job, with The Washington Post. Paterno was described as frail then,
speaking mostly in a whisper and wearing a wig. The second half of the
two-day interview was conducted at his bedside.
His family released a statement Sunday morning to announce his death:
“His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled.”
“He died as he lived,” the statement said. “He fought hard until the
end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded
everyone of how blessed his life had been. His ambitions were far
reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to
achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his
players and his community.”
Paterno built a program based on the credo of “Success with Honor,” and
he found both. The man known as “JoePa” won 409 games and took the
Nittany Lions to 37 bowl games and two national championships. More
than 250 of the players he coached went on to the NFL.
“He will go down as the greatest football coach in the history of the
game,” Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said after his former team, the
Florida Gators, beat Penn State 37-24 in the 2011 Outback Bowl.
Paterno roamed the sidelines for 46 seasons, his thick-rimmed glasses,
windbreaker and jet-black sneakers as familiar as the Nittany Lions’
blue and white uniforms. He won 409 games and two national
championships.
The reputation he built looked even more impressive because he insisted
on keeping graduation rates high while maintaining on-field success.
But in the middle of his 46th season, the legend was shattered. Paterno
was engulfed in a child sex abuse scandal when a former trusted
assistant, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of molesting 10 boys over a
15-year span, sometimes in the football building.
Paterno at first said he was fooled. But outrage built quickly when the
state’s top cop said the coach hadn’t fulfilled a moral obligation to
go to the authorities when a graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, told
Paterno he saw Sandusky with a young boy in the showers of the football
complex in 2002.
At a preliminary hearing for the school officials, McQueary testified
that he had seen Sandusky attacking the child with his hands around the
boy’s waist but said he wasn’t 100 percent sure it was intercourse.
McQueary described Paterno as shocked and saddened and said the coach
told him he’d “done the right thing” by reporting the encounter.
Paterno waited a day before alerting school officials but never went to
the police.
“I didn’t know which way to go ... and rather than get in there and
make a mistake,” Paterno said in the Post interview.
“You know, (McQueary) didn’t want to get specific,” Paterno said. “And
to be frank with you I don’t know that it would have done any good,
because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I
thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there
was a problem, that would be following up on it.”
When the scandal erupted in November, Paterno said he would retire
following the 2011 season. He also said he was “absolutely devastated”
by the abuse case.
“This is a tragedy,” he said. “It is one of the great sorrows of my
life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
But the university trustees faced a crisis, and in an emergency meeting
that night, they fired Paterno, effective immediately. Graham Spanier,
one of the longest-serving university presidents in the nation, also
was fired.
Paterno was notified by phone, not in person, a decision that board
vice chairman John Surma later regretted, according to Lanny Davis, an
attorney retained by the trustees as an adviser.
The university handed the football team to one of Paterno’s assistants,
Tom Bradley, who said Paterno “will go down in history as one of the
greatest men, who maybe most of you know as a great football coach.”
“As the last 61 years have shown, Joe made an incredible impact,” said
the statement from the family. “That impact has been felt and
appreciated by our family in the form of thousands of letters and well
wishes along with countless acts of kindness from people whose lives he
touched. It is evident also in the thousands of successful student
athletes who have gone on to multiply that impact as they spread out
across the country.”
Paterno believed success was not measured entirely on the field. From
his idealistic early days, he had implemented what he called a “grand
experiment” — to graduate more players while maintaining success on the
field.
He was a frequent speaker on ethics in sports, a conscience for a world
often infiltrated by scandal and shady characters.
The team consistently ranked among the best in the Big Ten for
graduating players. As of 2011, it had 49 academic All-Americans, the
third-highest among schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision. All but
two played under Paterno.
“He teaches us about really just growing up and being a man,” former
linebacker Paul Posluszny, now with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars,
once said. “Besides the football, he’s preparing us to be good men in
life.”
Paterno certainly had detractors. One former Penn State professor
called his high-minded words on academics a farce, and a former
administrator said players often got special treatment. His coaching
style often was considered too conservative. Some thought he held on to
his job too long, and a move to push him out in 2004 failed.
But the critics were in the minority, and his program was never cited
for major NCAA violations. The child sex abuse scandal, however, did
prompt separate investigations by the U.S. Department of Education and
the NCAA into the school’s handling.
Paterno played quarterback and cornerback for Brown University and set
a defensive record with 14 career interceptions, a distinction he still
boasted about to his teams in his 80s. He graduated in 1950 with plans
to go to law school. He said his father hoped he would someday be
president.
But when Paterno was 23, a former coach at Brown was moving to Penn
State to become the head coach and persuaded Paterno to come with him
as an assistant.
“I had no intention to coach when I got out of Brown,” Paterno said in
2007 in an interview at Penn State’s Beaver Stadium before being
inducted into college football’s Hall of Fame. “Come to this hick town?
From Brooklyn?”
In 1963, he was offered a job by the late Al Davis — $18,000, triple
his salary at Penn State, plus a car to become general manager and
coach of the AFL’s Oakland Raiders. He said no. Rip Engle retired as
Penn State head coach three years later, and Paterno took over.
At the time, the Lions were considered “Eastern football” — inferior —
and Paterno courted newspaper coverage to raise the team’s profile. In
1967, PSU began a 30-0-1 streak.
But Penn State couldn’t get to the top of the polls. The Lions finished
second in 1968 and 1969 despite perfect seasons. They were undefeated
and untied again in 1973 at 12-0 again but finished fifth. Texas edged
them in 1969 after President Richard Nixon, impressed with the
Longhorns’ bowl performance, declared them No. 1.
“I’d like to know,” Paterno said later, “how could the president know
so little about Watergate in 1973, and so much about college football
in 1969?”
A national title finally came in 1982, after a 27-23 win over Georgia
at the Sugar Bowl. Another followed in 1986 after the Lions picked off
Vinny Testaverde five times and beat Miami 14-10 in the Fiesta Bowl.
They made several title runs after that, including a 2005 run to the
Orange Bowl and an 11-1 season in 2008 that ended in a 37-23 loss to
Southern California in the Rose Bowl.
In his later years, physical ailments wore the old coach down.
Paterno was run over on the sideline during a game at Wisconsin in
November 2006 and underwent knee surgery. He hurt his hip in 2008
demonstrating an onside kick. An intestinal illness and a bad reaction
to antibiotics prescribed for dental work slowed him for most of the
2010 season. He began scaling back his speaking engagements that year,
ending his summer caravan of speeches to alumni across the state.
Then a receiver bowled over Paterno at practice in August, sending him
to the hospital with shoulder and pelvis injuries and consigning him to
coach much of what would be his last season from the press box.
“The fact that we’ve won a lot of games is that the good Lord kept me
healthy, not because I’m better than anybody else,” Paterno said two
days before he won his 409th game and passed Eddie Robinson of
Grambling State for the most in Division I. “It’s because I’ve been
around a lot longer than anybody else.”
Paterno could be conservative on the field, especially in big games,
relying on the tried-and-true formula of defense, the running game and
field position.
“They’ve been playing great defense for 45 years,” Iowa coach Kirk
Ferentz said in November.
Paterno and his wife, Sue, raised five children in State College.
Anybody could telephone him at his modest ranch home — the same one he
appeared in front of on the night he was fired — by looking up
“Paterno, Joseph V.” in the phone book.
He walked to home games and was greeted and wished good luck by fans on
the street. Former players paraded through his living room for the
chance to say hello. But for the most part, he stayed out of the
spotlight.
Paterno did have a knack for jokes. He referred to Twitter, the social
media site, as “Twittle-do, Twittle-dee.”
He also could be abrasive and stubborn, and he had his share of run-ins
with his bosses or administrators. And as his legend grew, so did the
attention to his on-field decisions, and the questions about when he
would hang it up.
Calls for his retirement reached a crescendo in 2004. The next year,
Penn State went 11-1 and won the Big Ten. In the Orange Bowl, PSU beat
Florida State, whose coach, Bobby Bowden, was eased out after the 2009
season after 34 years and 389 wins.
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