Perhaps the most ironic element when looking at the way Joe Paterno lost his job as Penn State’s football coach after 46 seasons is that as a young man, he had his eyes set on law school.
The fallout in 2011 from the child sex-abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky, who was an assistant on Paterno’s Penn State staff until 1999, prompted the university’s Board of Trustees to fire Paterno, then 84, with three games left in the regular season.
Paterno, who died Sunday at 85, was criticized for not going to law enforcement in 2002 once he was told by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary that McQueary had seen Sandusky allegedly sexually abusing a young boy in a shower on campus.
“I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,” Paterno told The Washington Post in January 2012 in the only interview he gave after the scandal broke. “So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”
Paterno had been in the hospital since Jan. 13 as he dealt with treatment related to lung cancer. On Saturday, his
family released a statement saying major college football’s winningest coach was in serious condition. Word spread that he was near death. On campus in State College, hundreds of students and fans gathered for an impromptu vigil at his statue across from the football field.
The Pennsylvania hospital where Paterno died told the Associated Press that the cause of death was spreading lung cancer. Paterno’s family made the initial announcement in a statement Sunday morning:
“He died as he lived. 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.”
The statement also said, “His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled.”
The last 11 weeks of his life were filled with physical and emotional challenges. Days after he was fired in November 2011, it was disclosed Paterno had been diagnosed with lung cancer.
In many eyes, the sordid scandal tarnished the legacy of Paterno, who spent 62 seasons on the Nittany Lions football staff and became the winningest Division I coach in the history of the sport.
Steve Shaffer, a 30-year PSU season ticketholder, who saw Paterno’s first win as a head coach in 1966, said days after Paterno was let go that “the whole thing is like finding out there’s no Santa Claus.”
The end to Paterno’s tenure came in a way nobody could have predicted.
It was also a football career that almost didn’t happen.
In 1950, while a senior at Brown University, where he played football, Paterno was accepted into the Boston
University School of Law. While awaiting graduation, he got an offer from Brown’s coach, Rip Engle, to be a part-time assistant, working with the team’s quarterbacks.
Shortly thereafter, however, Engle accepted the position as head coach at Penn State. His contract allowed him to bring one assistant with him . He chose an “astonished” Paterno, who followed his mentor to the small central Pennsylvania outpost of State College.
Paterno went on to become the national personification of the college football coach and the public face of Penn State, which made his eventual fall all the more compelling.
After succeeding Engle in 1966, what Paterno accomplished in a 46-year head coaching tenure was winning two national championships, having five unbeaten seasons, victories in all five major bowl games — and earning a spot in the Hall of Fame.
He holds records for the most years spent as a head coach at one school and the most victories for a major-college coach, with 409. He was even athletics director at the school from 1980-82.
Courtesy of USAToday.com
