Joe Paterno is gone, but our struggle with his legacy endures
Statues come in bronze. People are more complicated. (AP photo)
In death as in life, timing matters. Had Joe Paterno died Jan. 22, 2011, he’d have been hailed as the one coach who’d negotiated the murky waters of contemporary college football and left, both his sport and this world, with dignity shining. Every obituary would have included, no further down than the second paragraph, the line: “He did it the right way.”
But Joe Paterno died Jan. 22, 2012, and today every first paragraph is duty-bound to mention of his forced departure from Penn State 2 1/2 months before his death, a departure triggered not because some recruit was given a new car but because a longtime assistant coach was indicted for child sex abuse.
Joe Paterno took two national championships, won more games at the major-college level than any other football coach and never saw his program penalized by the NCAA. Had he died at age 84, as opposed to 85, we would have mourned his passing while celebrating a life lived about as well as is humanly possible. Today the response is more muted and infinitely more jumbled.
We cannot reduce the non-action that cost Paterno his job and a chunk of his legacy to asterisk material; at the same time, we cannot in good conscience say that one mistake, even one of massive dimensions, should outweigh the good done in a life of 85 years.
In the 2 1/2 months between Jerry Sandusky’s indictment and his employer’s death, we’ve had the chance to review our feelings toward Paterno. Was he enabler or scapegoat? Was he a villain for not speaking up louder and sooner, or was he a victim for being shunted aside in the wake of a media storm unprecedented in American sports? Was he a good guy who’d done a bad thing, or was the thing he did — or, in this case, didn’t do — so bad that all claims to goodness were forfeit?
We’ve had 2 1/2 months to reconsider, and we might need 2 1/2 decades to reach any consensus. The allegations against Sandusky triggered such a visceral response that it was possible to hear an ESPN commentator insist that Paterno should be locked away in a jail cell next to his former assistant. For the crime, we can only presume, of not doing the right thing. But if not doing the right thing every moment of every waking hour constituted a felony, none of us would be free today.
The belief here is that Paterno erred because he came to care more about his legacy than about people. The man who’d made “Success With Honor” his credo was handed a loaded choice: Do I speak up, knowing full well that speaking up will stain a program I’ve spent more than a half-century nurturing, or do I keep quiet and hope the storm passes?
Indeed, Sandusky did resign as defensive coordinator in 1999, a year after Penn State investigated him for showering with a minor. (I will never believe thatSandusky wasn’t pushed aside.) But he never quite went away, and it was a 2002 incident — witnessed by then-grad assistant Mike McQuery, who reported what he saw to the head coach — that brought the Paterno and his proud program low.
Maybe if Paterno hadn’t been hailed as a paragon of virtue — if he’d been a football coach of more dubious portfolio — our shock and disappointment wouldn’t have been so pronounced. We expected more of him, but how many among us would have done differently had the loaded choice been ours? (Oh, we can say we would’ve, but virtue is easy to proclaim when it’s not yours on the hook.)
And now Paterno is gone, leaving us more confused than ever. Had he died a year ago, the charges against Sandusky would have still come to light, but they wouldn’t have been placed so squarely on Paterno’s shoulders. He wouldn’t have been fired with two regular-season games remaining in his 46th season as head coach, wouldn’t have precipitated such a debate within us all. Had he died a year ago, the obits would have been easy to write. They just wouldn’t have been complete.
A year ago we’d have canonized this man as St. Joseph of State College, Pa. A year ago we’d have said he did it the right way and left it at that. Today we must rewrite that line to reflect the complexity that enfolded this life the same way complexity enfolds all human life. Today we must say of Joe Paterno: “He did it the right way — except for the one time he didn’t.”
By Mark Bradley
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307 comments Add your comment
Dan Mayhue
January 23rd, 2012
6:48 pm
Allow me to post this article from SI’s Rick Reilly, which may reveal more of the man than Mr. Bradley even knows:
“Maybe you will never be convinced Joe Paterno was a good man who made one catastrophic mistake, but do you have time for just one story?
In 2000, Penn State freshman defensive back Adam Taliaferro had his spine crushed when tackling an Ohio State player. He lay on that September field paralyzed and panicked.
The first person he saw when he opened his eyes was Paterno, who died Sunday at 85.
“He could see I was losing it, but his eyes stayed totally calm,” Taliaferro remembers. “And I remember that familiar, high-pitched voice, going, ‘You’re gonna get through this, Kid. You’re gonna be OK.’ And I just trusted him. I believed it.”
Taliaferro wound up in a hospital bed in Philadelphia, everything frozen solid below the neck. Doctors said he had about a 3 percent chance of walking again. And every other week, Paterno would fly to Philly to see him.
“He’d bring our trainer and a couple of my teammates,” Taliaferro says. “Nobody in the hospital knew he was there.” Paterno would tell him all the dumb things his teammates and coaches had done lately. Pretty soon, Taliaferro would be laughing his IVs out.
“I can’t tell you what that meant to me,” says Taliaferro, now 30. “I’m stuck in that hospital, and here’s Coach Paterno bringing a piece of the team to me, in the middle of the season. How many coaches would do that?”
Paterno and Taliaferro
For more of Adam Taliaferro’s memories of Joe Paterno, click here.
One midnight, Taliaferro moved a toe and the first person his dad called was Paterno. His dad held the phone to Adam’s ear and Paterno said, “You’re gonna prove ‘em all wrong, Kid!”
From then on, every visit, Paterno wanted to see Taliaferro move something new. “I got to where I wanted to be ready. A finger, a hand, whatever. I wanted to perform for Coach Paterno.”
One day, five months into it, Paterno walked in and said, “What’s new, Kid?” Taliaferro swung his legs over the bed, stood and extended his hand to shake.
“I’ll never forget his eyes,” he says. “They were already huge behind those Coke-bottle glasses, but they got even bigger.” Paterno gave him a 10-second hug and then said, “Kid, ya make me proud.”
A man is more than his failings.
I learned a lot about Paterno when I wrote a story about him in 1986 for Sports Illustrated. I’ve learned a lot about him since. He was a humble, funny and giving man who was unlike any other coach I ever met in college football. He rolled up his pants to save on dry cleaning bills. He lived in the same simple ranch house for the last 45 years. Same glasses, same wife, same job, for most of his adult life.
He was a man who had two national championships, five undefeated seasons, and yet for years he drove a white Ford Tempo. In 46 years as a head coach, he never had a single major NCAA violation.
He was the only coach I’ve ever known who went to the board of trustees to demand they increase entrance requirements, who went to faculty club meetings to hear the lectures, who listened to opera while drawing up game plans.
He was a Depression kid who wouldn’t allow stars on helmets or names on jerseys. And he hated expensive tennis shoes.
He’d see a player wearing Air Jordans and say, “It’s not the sneakers, Kid, it’s the person in them.”
One day Taliaferro wore an entirely different pair into his office, a pair of “Air Paternos” he’d made himself. “He freaked out,” Taliaferro remembers. “He was about to call Nike. He thought they were real!”
They represented everything the coach did not stand for.
If a player was struggling with a subject, Paterno would make him come to his house for wife Sue’s homemade pasta and her tutoring. One time, he told a high school blue chipper named Bob White he wouldn’t recruit him unless he agreed to read 12 novels and turn in two-page book reports to Sue. They were the first books he ever finished. White wound up with two degrees and a job at the university.
Paterno was other things, too, like controlling and immovable. He lingered as head coach when he promised time and again he wouldn’t. And when he needed to follow up on what he’d been told about Jerry Sandusky and a child in the shower in 2002, he failed miserably.
But he followed up for thousands of others.
Even though Taliaferro would never play football again, Paterno stayed on him to keep moving. “I came to Penn State to become a lawyer,” he told him. “But I never made it. You could, Kid. You’re smart.”
He got the fully recovered Taliaferro a summer internship with the NFLPA in New York and, before you knew it, Taliaferro was a corporate lawyer in Cherry Hill, N.J. He successfully ran for local office there and is now running for the Penn State board of trustees, where he wants to help his school heal from a scandal Paterno made worse with his neglect.
“The last three months, I’ve just wanted to go up on a rooftop and shout, ‘I wish you knew him like I do!’” Taliaferro says. “I know, in my heart, if he’d understood how serious this situation was, he’d have done more.”
I believe that, too. But if you don’t, I respect that. I only ask this:
If we’re so able to vividly remember the worst a man did, can’t we also remember the best?”
Ted M
January 23rd, 2012
7:11 pm
(I will never believe that the Sandusky wasn’t pushed aside.)
me either…which means Paterno knew in 2002 that Sandusky was a serial child rapist and he let him continue to rape kids. Its not okay to do that just because you won a lot of football games.
Joe Paterno should go down in history as the man who let a serial child rapist rape as many as 20 or 30 kids AFTER he knew.
Donald
January 23rd, 2012
8:54 pm
These cover ups occur far too often from high school to the professional level. How many schools and organizations look the other way when a player is accused of battery or rape because it is a star player who is accused of it? I remember the one incident where an Alabama player was accused of assault by his girlfriend and her father who was a die hard crimson tide fan came out to tell the police and the school that she was a liar and to not arrest or suspend the player. To some people sports are their religion and nothing should get in the way of it prospering, wether it be women, children, or even their own family. Sport is thicker than blood to them.
Mr. Thomas Anthony Jones, SR
January 23rd, 2012
9:24 pm
The News Media is the problem, not Mr. Joseph Paterno. Any time they smell blood in the air they like Hyenas and try to bring down our heroes. Fire the New Media and always keep the Wise Heach Coach. Mr. Joseph Paterno was the scapegoat for the News Media which is notorious for making a very great man like Mr. Paterno and making him a Scapegoat. Penn State should have fired theirly cowardly trustees and Kept Mr. Joseph Paterno. The News Media is a big bunch of liars and hypocrites and womenizers. Never listen to the liars at the AJC. They are just jealoius of all his Mr. Joseph Paterno)’s great coaching abilities. and generosity to thers. We all support Mr. Joseph Paterno and him family. We all detest the news media and their lies
Sid
January 24th, 2012
10:53 am
Saban on Paterno:
Saban said that he considered former Penn State coach Joe Paterno a friend and that his death was a loss for college football.
“I can’t say enough about what he did for college football and his dedication to college football,” Saban said. “I don’t think anybody can; for the success that he had and the impact that he had and how he affected other people.”
Mark Bradley on Paterno:
Not worthy of regurgitation.
dick in dixie
January 26th, 2012
12:10 pm
i’m not struggling with this one at all. paterno knowingly helped shelter a pedophile for almost a decade. being a good football coach doesn’t redeem you from something like that.
RentATrent
January 28th, 2012
11:01 pm
Pedo State swept this under the rug because they didn’t want bad press. Joe Pa knew about Sandusky. Then End.