Vince Dooley on Joe Paterno: ‘It’s an unfortunate situation’
Joe Paterno on the day he announced his intention to resign at season's end. (AP photo)
Vince Dooley has known Joe Paterno for nearly 50 years. “We’re friends,” Dooley said. “Not close friends, but we started out together [Dooley became Georgia's head coach in 1964; Paterno took over at Penn State in 1966] and we coached in a college all-star game in Atlanta, and we went on a lot of Nike trips together. We got to know him and his wife Sue very well.”
Dooley spoke Wednesday morning, moments after Paterno announced his intention to retire at season’s end. And the man who retired from coaching in 1988 at 56 said this of the man who kept going until age 84: “It probably was time for him to retire.”
Dooley won one national championship at Georgia. On New Year’s Day 1983, his Bulldogs were denied another title by Paterno and Penn State in the Sugar Bowl. A defense coordinated by Jerry Sandusky held Heisman winner Herschel Walker to 103 yards rushing and lifted the Nittany Lions to a 27-23 victory and their first championship. It was a breakthrough moment in Paterno’s career, a career that would see him win more games than any major collegiate coach.
And now this: A coach whose slogan was “Success With Honor” became a national flashpoint after Sandusky was arrested on charges of child sexual abuse. Said Dooley: “Two or three games before he’s going out, this comes up … It’s an unfortunate situation.”
It is. It might well be the saddest story in the history of collegiate sports. Said Dooley: “Paterno did report [an eyewitness account of Sandusky, then retired as a coach, having sex with a boy on Penn State property] it to the AD. From a legal standpoint, they’ve said they’re not going to prosecute or indict [Paterno] or whatever. But as people began to think about it, they felt he should have pushed [the investigation of Sandusky] more.”
Then: “I’m sure he wishes he had pushed it more … It was obviously a mistake in judgment.”
Sure enough, Paterno said in the statement announcing his plan to retire: “With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
Dooley: “I’m sure he was shocked [by the eyewitness account]. Maybe [Paterno] thought it was an incident and hoped it would go away, but the more you think about it, you think it probably wasn’t a one-time incident … The guy was sick.”
Penn State hasn’t yet said whether it will accede to Paterno’s desire to coach through the end of this season, a season that could yield a Big Ten championship and a Rose Bowl berth. Taking the longer view, Dooley said he doesn’t believe the storm over Sandusky will cheapen a Paterno legacy that once seemed pristine.
“In long run, I don’t think it’s going to affect him. It will be talked about and written about and people will second-guess him, but there has been too much strength over the long haul. Time will pass.”
Dooley on Paterno himself: “I’ve always thought of him as an upright, honest person. I still think that of him.”
And here we come to a thorny question: Should one failure of conscience or wisdom override a half-century of good work? Will enough time pass that the Sandusky case won’t be mentioned in the second sentence of Paterno’s biography? Will anyone ever view this demonstrably great coach in quite the same way?
Dooley believes they might. I’d disagree. (I’m of the opinion that Paterno shouldn’t be allowed to coach another game.) But I yield to Dooley in that I’ve never been a coach or an administrator at the highest level of collegiate sports, and he has. And when I mentioned that Penn State football had often been held up as the model football program, Dooley corrected me.
“There is no perfect program,” he said. “There never will be.”
By Mark Bradley
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207 comments Add your comment
Billy
November 9th, 2011
3:39 pm
The Truth Be Told
Would you stay friends with someone that you knew had sex with a 10 yeat old boy?
shame.....
November 9th, 2011
3:39 pm
coach paterno knew what his friend sanduscky was and chose wins and the program over young boys
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
3:41 pm
Bottom line……I smell a cover up.
I Believe
November 9th, 2011
3:41 pm
I Believe that you could rally significant blog traffic with at least 15 more columns on this issue before the week is out.
South GA VU grad
November 9th, 2011
3:42 pm
Penn State officials are culpable in all this, including Paterno. Because of their inaction, a monster was allowed to continue to prey on innocent young children. I hope those aware of this that did nothing will be haunted by their inaction for the rest of their lives. Where has human decency gone?
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
3:45 pm
What I find interesting from the JoePa apologists is they say he did what he was supposed to – he went to his superior. However, JoePa has essentially told the Board of Regents (his superiors) that he will go out his own way and not to spend another minute discussing his status.
Who the hell is running things in Happy Valley?
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
3:45 pm
Since many of the boys were raped on campus, how much will Penn State have to pay out when all is said and done?
Contractor
November 9th, 2011
3:50 pm
Paterno did not do the right thing, and he turned his back to the situation after he mentioned it to a board member. This isn’t stealing some chips from the gas station, this was the rape and molestation of a child, at risk child to make matters worse. These are the situations that turn people into serial rapists and murders because their minds as children are ripped from them and they turn crazy. Anything other than calling the cops and getting Sandusky away from children and the Penn State program was not enough. This is a case for bettering Humanity, not just thinking you did enough, so ignore the situation. Paterno was told and received hard evidence that a kid was being molested, not just hearsay or I think that’s what happened, it was witnessed and brought to his attention. He should be ashamed and there is no telling what else may have gone on during his tenure, maybe nothing, but maybe something else just as big, we’ll probably never know, but Paterno should be ashamed for his lack of action and definitely better pray for the horrible experiences all of those kids faced.
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
3:50 pm
JoePa heads up the Nittany Liars.
dawg tired
November 9th, 2011
3:51 pm
Paterno is the boss at Penn State. He runs that program and its facilities. He was informed of what was going on. Sandusky continued to have the ability to come on campus and use the facilities for years after Joe was informed by that GA.
He did nothing other that follow chain of command when decency required more than that.
NCAA Critic
November 9th, 2011
3:53 pm
I would argue that Paterno and Penn State did what most people instinctively do when presented with crimes within their organization-they deny and attempt to cover it up. The tendency is so common it could be considered human nature. And, we the people (and the justice system) should ream their arses when, on occasion, the miserable truth is exposed.
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
3:56 pm
What are the chances that ANY of the assistant coaches had not heard of what Sandusky had done? This being the case, the entire staff should be dismissed and never allowed back on campus at PSU.
We Own You....
November 9th, 2011
3:57 pm
I am tired of hearing about “ppor Joe.” Poor kids who were raped by a person that Paterno allowed to remain close to his program after he knew what was going on. He shouldn’t be allowed to step on a field again.
Contractor
November 9th, 2011
3:58 pm
I just want to know how a man’s legacy will get better with time and how this dark cloud that reaches beyond football and touches the lives of everyone with children will not tarnish it in Dooley’s eyes? True, Joe Paterno did not touch a kid, but his negligence is appalling and companies get sued daily for way much less than this when negligence is presented. How can you claim to teach and raise boys into men and yet you can’t even alert the cops when a young boy is being raped? That’s not relying on your psalms or practicing what you preach. Time will not be generous to Joe Paterno or his legacy, just like Barry Bonds and steroids, but we all know this situation is way bigger than a sport or game, this rocks the very core of society and the lives of everyone involved and others that have had to live through these experiences of their own.
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
4:02 pm
Contractor
November 9th, 2011
3:58 pm
“…companies get sued daily for way much less than this when negligence is presented.”
Bingo
The Truth
November 9th, 2011
4:02 pm
I’m merely looking at this situation from an objective point of view. JoePa didn’t rape anybody, Sadunsky did. Should JoePa’s reputation be scarred by another man’s actions? I don’t think so. I’m not apologizing for JoePa. The media has spun this so far out of control, Michael Vick is saying “I’m glad that’s not me”. As I said before Sadunsky should rot in hell, but to say JoePa should have done more at the time really isn’t fair. Maybe in his mind at the time, it was the right thing to do. Everybody else after the fact dropped the ball on that. So JoePa takes the hit for it because no one else did anything about it. I don’t think right. Hot Seat I agree with your question. Who the hell is running Happy Valley?
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
4:04 pm
I heard where JoePa said he is praying for the abused boys and hopes they get comfort. Has he also been praying for these boys the past 10 years?
phil
November 9th, 2011
4:05 pm
Let me guess.
This was an attempt to get Dooley to say something ill-advised in hopes that he could also be trashed in the media?
It didn’t work.
Although surely many will think Vince wasn’t harsh enough in his criticism of the “obviously guilty” Paterno.
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
4:06 pm
JoePa supposedly cried today when he told his players he had decided to retire. I wonder what emotions JoePa exhibited when he learned of the child rape?
phil
November 9th, 2011
4:08 pm
The hot seat….
November 9th, 2011
3:45 pm
Since many of the boys were raped on campus, how much will Penn State have to pay out when all is said and done?
************************
According to the presentment, only one of the boys was actually raped.
It was one too many.
All of the other accusations are also sickening and disturbing, assuming they’re true.
But this is an example of what I mean by runaway assumptions about this entire thing.
Now everyone was raped. Next we’ll be hearing how it was actually Paterno in the showers.
Let the story play itself out folks before presuming the guilt of each and every coach on the staff up there.
kevin
November 9th, 2011
4:09 pm
To Shame at 1:46 who said,
“He who is perfect shall cast the first stone.” – a guy named Jesus said that.
Jesus WAS NOT SAYING that we aren’t to call right right and wrong wrong – SIN SIN. If we don’t read Scripture in it’s context, we don’t come CLOSE to understanding its meaning. What Jesus meant in John 8:1-11 was, the people who brought the woman caught in adultery to Him were just trying to TRAP Him. They didn’t bring the man. Both the man and the woman were guilty of the same sin and both were to be stoned by law.
And He STILL dealt with the woman’s sin. He looked her in the face and told her to STOP SINNING. If you try to make these verses mean that we can never punish LAWBREAKERS, what kind of world would we live in? (I know we slap people on the wrists nowadays, but it’s not as bad as it could be.)
phil
November 9th, 2011
4:11 pm
Contractor
November 9th, 2011
3:58 pm
I just want to know how a man’s legacy will get better with time and how this dark cloud that reaches beyond football and touches the lives of everyone with children will not tarnish it in Dooley’s eyes? True, Joe Paterno did not touch a kid, but his negligence is appalling and companies get sued daily for way much less than this when negligence is presented. How can you claim to teach and raise boys into men and yet you can’t even alert the cops when a young boy is being raped? That’s not relying on your psalms or practicing what you preach. Time will not be generous to Joe Paterno or his legacy, just like Barry Bonds and steroids, but we all know this situation is way bigger than a sport or game, this rocks the very core of society and the lives of everyone involved and others that have had to live through these experiences of their own.
*******************
Here’s another example of assumptions run wild….
How do any of us know whether Joe paterno touched a child wrongly?
We don’t know.
Give the facts a chance to come out. The 23 page presentment is NOT fact.
phil
November 9th, 2011
4:12 pm
Fire FG….
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
4:13 pm
phil
November 9th, 2011
4:08 pm
“Let the story play itself out folks before presuming the guilt of each and every coach on the staff up there.”
My whole contention was this: if the assistant coaches had heard talk (gossip?) about this situation and did nothing, they should not be allowed to continue coaching at PSU. Pretty simple.
SSIgator
November 9th, 2011
4:31 pm
From The Orlando Sentinel:
The year was 2006 and Florida State was playing Penn State in the Orange Bowl. At the time, Penn State coach Joe Paterno was asked about FSU linebacker A.J. Nicholson being sent home from the bowl site after he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in his hotel room in the days leading up to the game.
Replied Paterno irreverently: “He may not have even known what he was getting into. … A cute girl knocks on the door. What do you do? Thank God they don’t knock on my door. I’d refer them to a couple of other rooms.”
For all of those defending JoePa, is there any thing else you need to know about his moral compass? I guess he missed his Humanities class in school.
2010 BCS CHAMPS
November 9th, 2011
4:36 pm
“unfortunate situation”
Unfortunate is losing your job. This is a complete travesty.
phil
November 9th, 2011
4:39 pm
Fire everyone, everywhere….
Occupy Happy Valley!
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
4:39 pm
Classic “JoePa” clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vHPh-CO8jM
Nativebird
November 9th, 2011
4:43 pm
Should’ve retired long ago….you stay at something too long…past too long…and eventually, everyone’s luck will run out….even good people, who end up doing stupid things. Life, to a great extent, is all about timing and choices. Even those that excell at the latter, ignore the former at their own peril. Get out while you’re on top, even in something you love. this is why they call it, “Retirement”. Many of the driven, like Joe Pa, make the fatal mistake of replacing their life with their work.
SSIgator
November 9th, 2011
4:52 pm
Said Dooley: “Two or three games before he’s going out, this comes up … It’s an unfortunate situation.”
No, Jan Kemp was an unfortunate situation. This goes way beyond trying to pass off football players as students.
Had enough
November 9th, 2011
5:05 pm
This is the day the image Died.The truth has come out.Joe pa has no way out of this.He is going to do more damage to His image if he coaches Saturday and people will remember this forever .
The hot seat....
November 9th, 2011
5:08 pm
SSIgator
November 9th, 2011
4:52 pm
Yes, the Kemp affair exposed problems within UGA’s athletic program and UGA tried to clean up the mess. The episode encouraged other programs to clean up their messes as well, but I can’t speak as to what UF to improve their program. Maybe they were too involved in handling issues of football players discharging AK-47s in public or using a dead girlfriend’s credit cards to buy some bling towork on their academic shortcomings.
Ken Stallings
November 9th, 2011
5:12 pm
In about 24 hours time, I’ve gone from shock, to feeling sympathy for Joe Paterno, to being outraged by his self-serving actions. The only group of people I have more outrage for are the Penn State Athletic Director (who violated Pennsylvania notification laws by failing to pass along the reports to law enforcement), the coach who witnessed the sexual assault of a minor by an adult (for failing to directly notify law enforcement and try to stop the crime while in progress), and of course the perpetrator of the crime himself.
For this crime to go unreported to law enforcement for over a decade is disgusting and violates every grain of morality known to human kind! This was a child being raped in a campus locker room and an assistant coach and the head coach both knew about it! Had the matter been immediately reported to law enforcement, and had the assistant coach immediately acted to stop the crime, it still would have been a controversial action.
At this point, the media’s obsession with the effect on a single head football coach is both misplaced and frankly amoral. No one should care in the slightest what happens to Joe Paterno. He shamed himself! He was a man more than old enough to know better. He was expected by millions to be a leader of character and integrity. He spent decades carefully crafting the public image that he possessed more than average integrity and morality. Instead, when faced with a true moral litmus test, he stooped to the level of complicit coverup and absolute minimal public duty to report a serious felony crime!
His legacy is destroyed and one must wonder if the real Joe Paterno has suddenly been revealed for all its well hidden ugliness!
Mr Charlie
November 9th, 2011
5:15 pm
Nobody wants to answer questions. What about the guy who witnessed it? So, he sees a coach having sex with a child in the locker room and tells Joe?
Then he never mentions it again when he sees nothing happening, instead choosing to spend next 12 years at Penn State working for JP? Does that make any sense at all?
Who in the world does the Grand Jury take YEARS to complete something that seems to slam dunk? Is the DA as culpable and JP buy letting this guy walk aorund?
SSIgator
November 9th, 2011
5:16 pm
The hot seat….
What does UF have to do with this? My post was directed to Dooley’s comment calling it an unfortunate situation. That is almost as weak as JoePa saying he probably should have done more.
Mr Charlie
November 9th, 2011
5:17 pm
It really does have a Catholic Church feel to it.
Mr Charlie
November 9th, 2011
5:19 pm
What about the mother who confronted Sandusky? Why did she not beeline directly to the police? Again, there are a lot of missing pieces, and JP coaching or not coaching Saturday will not answer any of them.
TOo Tough44
November 9th, 2011
5:27 pm
Bad. Somebody should have done more immediately..like call the police and report this crime that happened to this poor kid. How many more has he molested in his lifetime….digusting.Sad.
TOo Tough44
November 9th, 2011
5:29 pm
I think alot of folks are taking out of context “unfortunate situation”. It is…but, not in a sympathetic way for JP..just that it is terrible this act was not addressed immediately to the police!
how do you know...
November 9th, 2011
5:29 pm
many people reading this are sitting at their computers, in debt up to their eyeballs, living from paycheck to paycheck and have no idea what they would do if they lost their job.
if they stumbled into work one morning and found a co-worker or subordinate engaged in similar behaviour…they too would go to their boss…or would they?
what if they did and their boss said ‘fughettabout it.’
oh, you brave internet commenters will start lighting me up like a christmas tree for this…but really….think about it….your job is on the line…and you have a simple choice…”do what’s right” and you have the potential of losing your house, your computer, your fancy car, your coffee pod machine, your iphone and dish tv…everything you have “worked for”….
faced with that choice, 99.9% of the people reading this comment would keep your comforts and leave the problem to someone else.
and that’s why everyone is so outraged. by making a big deal about it they can heap their guilt on joe paterno and penn state.
here’s how it works…you write…”joe paterno is a jerk and penn state is a terrible school.”
now you feel better and have relieved some anger from your own life of quiet despiration.
if you still are angry, you can go get a beer and go post some stuff about that other sex criminal herman cain.
what happened is wrong. joe paterno is wrong. penn state is wrong.
but, given the same circumstances, how do you know what you would have done? most people would have turned their cheek and walked away….not putting themselves “at risk.”
Judge Roy Bean-Sonora, Texas
November 9th, 2011
5:34 pm
For half time entertainment at every Penn State game, a team of horses, driven by teen age boys, shall drag the pervert Sandusky around the field no less than ten times.
phil
November 9th, 2011
5:42 pm
How do you know…
It is wrong for you to guess what others would do.
You must immediately resign from your job, if you have one, or be fired first thing tomorrow.
seriously, you make very good points and they’re probably pretty close to accurate.
Stanley
November 9th, 2011
5:47 pm
Is this what you call a tweet?
Jesus Freaking Christ
November 9th, 2011
5:49 pm
Christians are the most evil people on earth. Praise Allah.
Mr Charlie
November 9th, 2011
5:51 pm
Well, JP did not have to worry about his job, and the witness was a grad student, do I am sure he did not have the financial dependence on his job that you describe.
But really, what do you do? you don’t know who the victim is, you don’t have a schred of evidence other than what you say you saw. You are putting yourself out there without anything concrete to back it up, and you are putting up some very serious accusations against a powerful man.
But what I don’t understand it the Mom who confronted Sandusky, and why she did not go shouting from the rooftops, and why the DA took YEARS for this to come out if it was so slam dunk.
Felix
November 9th, 2011
6:02 pm
Man this is ugly. I hate to even think about it. It is gross. We need to focus more on the criminal/guilty one and the victims than on Coach Paterno. Yes, he probably should have done more and he says he wishes he had done more, but he did report it up the chain of command to those who did have responsibilty to investigate– but they did very little
GIVE ME A BREAK
November 9th, 2011
6:08 pm
Why do reporters continue to say that Sandusky was having sex with a 10 year old boy. He was raping a 10 year old boy. I believe there is a difference.
War Dang Dawg
November 9th, 2011
6:09 pm
Sandusky’s evil to the core. And it’s hard to believe that Paterno and other PSU insiders didn’t know that for a decade or more before this story broke. I don’t know how you square that, or justify it. My best guess is that they were trying to avoid a scandal that would rock the university. All they did was delay the scandal, probably to the detriment of other little boys. And the aging Sandusky has probably avoided years in prison that he would have spent had this case been prosecuted when it should have been. This is just a sickening situation all around.
LakeDawg
November 9th, 2011
6:10 pm
Dooley is forthright, but always guarded in his public statements. I have always admired Dooley, but I have to disagree with him here. Paterno will never overcome this. It will overshadow all of his other accomplishments and it should. It was disgraceful.
LakeDawg
November 9th, 2011
6:13 pm
how do you know…
There is some truth in what you say. So what is your point?