Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in major college football history who in November lost his job as Penn State’s football coach in the wake of the Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal, died Sunday in Mount Nittany Medical Center.
“He died as he lived,” the Paterno family said in a written statement, according to The Associated Press. “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 lost his bout with lung cancer nine weeks after it was disclosed he was fighting the disease.
He had been hospitalized since Jan. 13 due to complications from chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He was 85.
Paterno will be known for his hundreds of football victories, his millions of dollars of philanthrophic contributions, his commitment to academics and a scandal that ultimately cost him his job and, for some, his reputation.
Paterno coached football at Penn State for 62 years, from 1950-1965 as an assistant to his college coach at Brown, Rip Engle. Then, from Feb. 19, 1966 until Nov. 9, 2011, he was Penn State’s head coach – the longest such stint with one school in major college football history.
In all, Paterno was on the Penn State coaching staff for 704 games – 548 of them as a head coach – and 513 victories. His teams won national championships in 1982 and 1986, and had a record of 409-136-3. Paterno’s final victory came on Oct. 29, 2011, when a last-second field goal by visiting Illinois bounced off the goal post to preserve a 10-7 win in Beaver Stadium. The triumph was his 409th — and his last.
Eleven days later, on Nov. 9, Paterno was fired as coach by Penn State’s Board of Trustees. Earlier that day, the Hall of Fame coach had announced his intention to retire at the conclusion of the 2011 season.
The resignation-turned-firing came on the heels of the Nov. 5 release of a Commonwealth grand jury presentment that charged retired defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, a Paterno assistant from 1969-99, with 40 counts of child sexual abuse over a 15-year period.
In interviews last week, several Penn State trustees said that Paterno was dismissed as head coach because the board agreed he had not acted appropriately by only informing then-athletic director Tim Curley and then-senior administrator Gary Schultz of an alleged incident in a football locker room shower 2002 involving Sandusky and a young boy.
When Paterno announced his retirement in November, he released the following statement:
“I have come to work every day for the last 61 years with one clear goal in mind: To serve the best interests of this university and the young men who have been entrusted to my care…
“…At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can. This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
Since then, Paterno talked only once on the record. That came in an interview that place on Jan. 12 and Jan. 13, when an ailing Paterno spoke with Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post in his College Heights home, a few blocks from the Penn State campus. She reported, in part:
“Paterno’s hope is that time will be his ally when it comes to judging what he built, versus what broke down. ‘I’m not 31 years old trying to prove something to anybody,’ he said. ‘I know where I am.’ This is where he is: wracked by radiation and chemotherapy, in a wheelchair with a broken pelvis, and ‘shocked and saddened’ as he struggles to explain a breakdown of devastating proportions…”
Paterno is survived by his wife, Sue, a 1962 graduate of Penn State, and five children, all of whom are Penn State graduates: daughters Diana Giegerich and Mary Kay Hort, and sons David, Jay and Scott. Jay played football at Penn State and served as an assistant football coach at Penn State from 1995-2011. Paterno is also survived by 17 grandchildren and a sister.
Joe and Sue Paterno donated more than $4 million to Penn State, and they spearheaded a major effort to expand what is now the Paterno Library. It was at Paterno’s strong urging, in a 1983 address to the Board of Trustees just weeks after winning the national title, that Penn State established its first fundraising campaign. He was vice chair of that $352 million effort, then was honorary chair of a $1.37 billion campaign that ended in 2003.
Paterno’s many contributions helped establish the interfaith Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, the Paterno Fellows program in the College of the Liberal Arts, the Penn State All-Sports Museum and several endowed faculty positions and scholarships.
FROM BROOKLYN TO BROWN
Paterno was born on Dec. 21, 1926, on 18th Street in Brooklyn, N.Y., and starred as quarterback at Brooklyn Prep high school with his younger brother George, a fullback who later served as an analyst on Penn State football’s radio broadcast. It was at Brooklyn Prep, under Father Thomas Bermingham, that Paterno developed his lifelong interest in the classics.
Paired with George again in the backfield at Brown University, Paterno studied English literature in the classroom and led the Bears on the football field. Brown was 8-1 in 1949 with Paterno at quarterback and safety; he still holds a share of the Ivy League school’s interception record (14). Legendary sportswriter Stanley Woodward penned that Paterno was a quarterback “who can’t run, can’t pass -– just thinks and wins.”
As a graduate of Brown in 1950, Paterno followed Engle, his Brown coach, to Penn State College to serve as an assistant football coach. Paterno planned on staying for a few years, saving up enough money to attend law school. He never left.
From 1950-65, Paterno served as the Nittany Lions’ quarterbacks coach and eventually associate head football coach. In 1966, Paterno was named the successor to his mentor and became Penn State’s 14th head football coach. (Penn State’s 15th head coach, Bill O’Brien, hired on Jan. 6, 2012, is also a Brown alumnus.)
For the next 45 seasons and nine games, Paterno served as the Nittany Lions’ head coach. He led Penn State to national titles in 1982 and 1986, and three Big Ten championships. His teams recorded five undefeated, untied seasons (1968, ’69, ’73, ’86 and ’94) and finished in the Top 25 a total of 35 times.
Paterno was selected the AFCA National Coach of the Year an unprecedented five times and the Big Ten Coach the Year three times. He was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year in 1986, the centennial season of Penn State football that ended with the Nittany Lions’ historic 14-10 victory over Miami (Fla.) n the Fiesta Bowl.
Paterno was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2007. He was the all-time leader in bowl wins, with a record of 24-12-1, and was the only coach to win the five traditional bowl games: Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton and Fiesta. He coached 65 different first-team All-Americans and 26 different father-son combinations.
Paterno’s trademark was the Grand Experiment, a philosophy that took hold in the 1960s and required that his football players excel as students as well as athletes. As such, he delivered Penn State’s commencement address on June 16, 1973, in Beaver Stadium. Under Paterno, Penn State had 47 Academic All-Americans, 18 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship winners and 260 Academic All-Big Ten selections – the most since PSU joined the conference in 1993.
When Paterno became head coach in 1966, Beaver Stadium had 46,284 seats. Seven expansions and 46 years later, it had a capacity of 106,572 – making it the second-largest stadium in the nation. Under Paterno, Penn State was 231-54 in Beaver Stadium.
Outside of Beaver Stadium, on the east side of the stadium, stands a seven-foot-high bronze statue of Paterno that was erected in 2001. Hundreds of Penn State students and townspeople gathered there on Saturday night, dropping off flowers and cards at its base, and lighting scores of candles.
On the stone wall behind the statue is this 32-word quotation from the former coach:
“They ask me what I’d like written about me when I’m gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach.”
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