The Socialite Who Killed a Nazi with Her Bare Hands and 143 Other Fascinating People Who Died This Past Year by William McDonald

Author:William McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Joe Paterno

He Was Penn State, in Glory and Disgrace

Dec. 21, 1926 - Jan. 22, 2012

THE FACE OF PENN STATE: Joe Paterno in 1965.He would go on to win more games than any other major-college football coach and become a legend at the university.

Joe Paterno had won more games than any other major-college football coach. For almost half a century he was the face of Pennsylvania State University and a symbol of integrity in collegiate athletics. But a child sexual-abuse scandal that shocked the nation undid all that.

When told that his former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky had been observed molesting children, Paterno did nothing, and for that failure he was fired during the 2011 season. His reputation unraveling, it would get worse: Sandusky’s trial and conviction, a damning report arising from a seven-month investigation, and blunt N.C.A.A. sanctions would leave Paterno’s reputation in tatters.

But he did not live to see the fallout, to see his own statue removed from outside Beaver Stadium. Paterno died on Jan. 22 in State College, Pa., at 85, having learned he had lung cancer — the listed cause of death — in mid-November as the scandal unfolded.

During his 46 years as head coach, as he paced the sideline in his thick tinted glasses, white athletic socks and rolled-up baggy khaki pants, Paterno seemed as much a part of the Penn State landscape as Mount Nittany, overlooking the central Pennsylvania campus known as Happy Valley.

When Penn State defeated Illinois, 10-7, on Oct. 29, 2011, the victory was Paterno’s 409th, and he surpassed Eddie Robinson of Grambling for most career victories among N.C.A.A. Division I coaches. Penn State’s president at the time, Graham B. Spanier, presented Paterno with a commemorative plaque in a postgame ceremony.

It would be Paterno’s last game. Within days his former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was indicted and arrested on multiple charges of sexually abusing young boys extending back to his time on Paterno’s staff. On Nov. 9, Paterno and Spanier were fired by the university’s board of trustees because of their failure to go to the police after they were told of an accusation against Sandusky in 2002.

The following June Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of sexually assaulting 10 boys. And the following month, Louis J. Freeh, the former judge and director of the F.B.I., concluded in his report to the trustees that Paterno and other Penn State officials were aware in 1998 that the university police were investigating child-abuse accusations against Sandusky but that they did nothing. They did not even speak to Sandusky.

Further, the report made it clear that Paterno had persuaded Spanier and others not to report Sandusky to the authorities in 2001 after he had violently assaulted another boy in the football building’s showers.

The officials, the report said, had shown a “total and consistent disregard” for the welfare of children, had worked together to conceal Sandusky’s assaults and had done so for one central reason: fear of bad publicity, which would have harmed the university’s nationally ranked football

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