Joe Paterno worked his first game as head coach at Penn State University on Sept. 17, 1966, a 15-7 win over Maryland.
That game was played less than three months after I was born. That is true for many folks, though—fans of the Penn State program or not. Joe Paterno has been the only coach most of us have ever known at Penn State.
But the firestorm over allegations that longtime Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulted a child in a shower inside the football facility in 2002 just wasn’t going to go away. Paterno was reportedly told of the incident by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary, now an assistant coach at the school.
Paterno chose to tell a couple of university administrators about the alleged incident and then moved on.
That decision ultimately cost the 84-year-old Paterno his job at the university where he has worked since 1950. The Penn State Board of Trustees fired Paterno Wednesday night along with accepting the resignation of university president Graham Spanier. The firing was effective immediately and defensive coordinator Tom Bradley was named interim head coach.
The record shows what a giant Paterno is.
The coach Penn State fired won 409 games, more than any other coach in the history of Division I football.
The coach Penn State fired had donated millions to the university, funding scholarships, endowing faculty posts and covering much of the construction costs for the Joe Paterno Library on the State College, Pa., campus.
In 46 seasons as head coach, the NCAA never had a reason to come calling on the Penn State program. The players consistently graduated and the program earned a reputation for winning the right way, even as other schools around the nation were forced to vacate victories and, in at least one case, an award because they were unable to win the right way.
None of that could save Paterno in the end. Understand this: The board fired Paterno because there was simply no other choice to be made. Whether or not Paterno has been exonerated from criminal liability for not contacting law enforcement when told about the alleged 2002 incident involving Sandusky is irrelevant.
Paterno made a bad decision and if there is one great truth about life, it is that there is a cost to be borne for bad decisions.
In the end, Paterno was not bigger than the institution, even if it seemed for decades as if he was. After posting his fourth losing season in five years in 2004, there were rumblings that Paterno could be out. He survived the potential dismissal in 2004 by simply refusing to leave.
But on Wednesday, with the handwriting clearly on the wall, Paterno tried to dictate the terms of his departure. He announced Wednesday afternoon that he would retire at the end of this season.
There were two parts of his written statement to the press that stood out to me.
The first was his declaration that the board of trustees simply didn’t need to spend any more time talking about Paterno, that the group had other, more important topics, to discuss. It was a level of hubris completely out of touch with the reality of the situation.
The second point he stressed was that his retirement was happening because of his desire to do “what was right for the university.”
Isn’t that the thinking that led to this whole situation escalating to where it is right now?
Paterno chose to go to administration instead of the police because he wanted to do what was right for the university. Administration chose to bury the incident because it wanted to do what was right for the university.
Not once—not one time—during this whole affair did any of these people think to simply do what was right.
The irony is that Joe Paterno is now the former head football coach at Penn State University because, for perhaps the first time in this sordid mess, doing what was right was also what was right for the university.
