Scandal Doesn’t Define Joe Paterno
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By DERON SNYDER
Your life is judged by the contents within the dash, that punctuation mark between the dates of your birth and death, respectively. But some observers will focus on Joe Paterno’s final months of life, a dizzying and tumultuous 78-day descent from revered legend to fired, deceased legend.
Ignoring the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal that ended Paterno’s 46-season tenure as Penn State’s head football coach is out of the question. The sordid details warrant prominent mention — high in any story or early in any broadcast — whenever we look back at Paterno’s reign. There’s no escaping the fact that a longtime assistant allegedly conducted heinous acts for years, right under JoePa’s nose in the football team’s facility.
The revelations contained in a shocking 23-page indictment are a threat to overwhelm Paterno’s legacy. That would be a mistake. Sandusky gave Paterno’s image a black eye, not multiple cuts and lumps with busted lips and a bloody nose.
Reasonable people can disagree on Paterno’s culpability and whether he deserved to be fired Nov. 9, roughly 12 hours after he announced he would retire at season’s end. Paterno’s supporters argued that he fulfilled his legal requirements when a graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, informed him of a sexual assault in the showers. If higher-ups didn’t do the right thing with the information Paterno provided, that was their fault, not his.
Unlike former officials Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, Paterno wasn’t charged with a crime. But he was guilty of a lesser offense that led me to support his immediate firing, though it wasn’t grave enough to overshadow everything.
