JoePa is dead.
The winningest Division I college coach and the icon for longevity and loyalty to one institution died of lung cancer this morning/last night.
A pox upon Penn State! Penn State will now be the new Boston Red Sox pre-2004. The curse of JoePa will be the new Curse of the Bambino. The way that PSU let Paterno go, firing him in the aftermath of the breaking of the Sandusky accusations, will insure a pox upon the program.
Columnists (Easterbrook, Reilly) have pointed out the two-facedness of the PSU regents' actions. Their actions show that they had to know something. They threw Paterno under the bus but retained the two administrators (long enough that the university paid their legal fees for perjury) that Paterno did report the accusations to, the athletic director and then president of the university. Paterno cooperated in the investigation, the other two were tried for perjury for lying about their knowledge. But it was Paterno who was fired, even after announcing that he would retire at the end of the season.
Compare the PSU scandal against the Syracuse scandal. Syracuse stands by Bernie Fine and hasn't touched Jim Boeheim. There is damning evidence against Fine, recordings and even his wife knew about his inappropriate relationship with at least one ball boy. Paterno admitted he knew. Paterno went through college channels reporting the abuse when then Grad Assistant McCreary told him. And was fired. Should he have done more? Absolutely. Even he acknowledged that he should have done more. Everyone should have done more.
Then it came out that he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Then he broke his pelvis. With all the media attention, we practically watched the post-football decline of a man who's very nickname carries the nickname of the state where he coached for longer than some people live. He was at Penn State for 62 years, 46 as a head coach. How many people even work for 62 years? Let alone at one place. JoePa was Penn State. And they kicked him to the curb.
Do you know those people who are completely defined by their job--by what they do? Not in a bad way. Not in the I have to do this above and beyond anything and everything. But in the "that was what he was put on this earth to do" kind of way. Think Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts. Defined by Charlie Brown, Schultz died the same day the last new Peanuts strip ran. In an interview in 2008, a sportswriter asked him about life after football and the possibility of retirement. JoePa didn't know what he would do. Think about it. He had been doing football for 62 years at Penn State. That doesn't count playing at Brown. JoePa was football. Paterno responded to the question that he didn't know what he'd do after football. He was scared to think about life after football. As it turns out, there was only 77 days of life after football. JoePa didn't have to watch a Penn State game that he wasn't coaching after being fired.
After Paterno was fired, Penn State only won one game. Against a struggling, unranked Ohio State team that would later fire its own coach. Over the season, Penn State didn't beat a ranked team. Of course, the only ranked team that faced Paterno's Nittany Lions was Alabama, then ranked #2. The team was 8-1 when Paterno was fired. They finished 9-4. At least two highly ranked high school prospects withdrew commitments to Penn State.
Without JoePa, Penn State will fade into obscurity. Beyond talking about the Sandusky scandal, Penn State will be irrelevant. They will not be a highly ranked team. They will not play in any of the big bowls. They will not win another national championship.They owed more to JoePa. Penn State has an all-time record of 827-360-43. 409 of those 827 wins were JoePa's. Only 136 of those losses were his. Only 3 of those ties were his. He put Penn State on the NCAA Football map.
He deserved more.
