A Sad and Shocking End

This cannot be how it ends. And yet it is.

One sick, depraved human being has taken down an icon, bringing a proud university to its knees in the process.

Not alone of course; he had several unwilling accomplices. Whatever you may feel about the Penn State administration right now I can guarantee this; none of them wanted to be in this position. If they covered for Jerry Sandusky for whatever reason; to save the school or to save him, I assure you it was not by choice. It was because right or wrong, and it’s most likely wrong, they felt they had to.

To what extent Joseph Vincent Paterno was involved in that collaboration remains a mystery. It may never be fully understood. And it’s now irrelevant. The die has been cast and barring a dramatic change in facts or circumstances, he will be deemed fully complicit in these horrific events.

A significant majority believe that Paterno, either through negligent inaction or a conspiracy to defraud enabled a horrific scandal with devastating consequences. A small minority believe he is a high powered scapegoat, served up to satisfy public bloodlust. I honestly don’t know what to believe.

I cannot recall an event that has shaken my core convictions to this degree.

I do not expect those who are not part of the Penn State family to understand our grief. How can I expect others to understand it when I can't explain it myself? All I know is what I felt when the announcement was made official, profound sadness.

This is a DEVASTATING time for all of us in the Penn State community.

It’s not the act of JoePa's firing in and of itself that saddens me. It’s what it represents. This surreal nightmare is now undeniable on every level. Until this week any notion of Penn State football without Paterno was inconceivable, let along Paterno being fired. That it happened and happened so suddenly crystalizes on every level the monumental nature of this scandal.

Many have called JoePa's dismissal the end of an era.  You cannot fathom how inadequate that description is to the events at hand.

You must understand Penn State is a massive extended family. Our family has hundreds of thousands of members. It stretches across years and decades and thousands of miles. We are incredibly broad and diverse, different in so many ways. The one thing that binds us is an undying love of The Pennsylvania State University. And yes part of that is represented in our love and respect for Penn State football.

Understand this, whatever you may think of him right now, Joe Paterno was the patriarch of our family. He was quite literally the physical embodiment of this place we hold so sacred. His termination represents a spiritual death to our family, to our school, and to our beliefs. For that we mourn.

We mourn for the man we knew, and we mourn in fear of the man we may not have known.

We mourn for the destruction of a great man and that man’s reputation. We mourn the systematic annihilation of six decades of our history.

And we mourn our fear that perhaps the great man was not so great after all. At least not when it mattered the most.

Do not interpret our grief as an endorsement of his action or lack thereof. We all understand that gravity of this situation. I have opinions on Paterno’s culpability but I’m unwilling to share them. For one thing I don’t trust my feelings and convictions. I’m not sure I can see clearly through my emotions or bias. For another, I quite literally dread the next development that might make things worse.

Part of me cannot fathom that 60 plus years of dedicated service to one university is being wiped away. That’s 60 plus years, a lifetime of coaching, teaching, and mentoring young men. Some coaches are associated with a school or program. Joe Paterno literally is Penn State football. He is the universal constant for every Penn Stater past and present.

The other part of me cannot fathom that he may have played some role, however peripheral in these horrific crimes. He neither perpetrated nor witnesses these acts. And to whatever extent he enabled them he was not alone. It does not matter. Anyone involved in this appalling tragedy must be held accountable.

In my perfect world a man with a six decade track record of excellence would have been given the benefit of the doubt. We would have allowed for due process, for ALL of the facts to be known before such drastic action was taken.

Alas that was not realistic. I knew by Tuesday that JoePa would never coach another game. This scandal became too big, too fast. His position became untenable as did so many others. I knew this with absolute certainty.

And still I cried when the announcement was made. The raw emotion of the moment was more powerful than I ever expected.  Even now I can’t grasp the non-stop “Paterno fired” headline that’s living in perpetuity on cable TV.

Jerry Sandusky is the ultimate bad guy here. Everyone who suffers for this does so ultimately because of him. Others made bad decisions, horrible perhaps but he and only he committed these heinous crimes. I will never back off of that belief.

That does not absolve the actions of our leaders. We entrusted them with something we hold sacred and they betrayed that trust. Their actions and decisions have brought shame to the entire Penn State community. Any and all who were involved must pay with nothing less than their jobs. If that includes Joe Paterno then so be it.

It’s just so hard to believe. 

Let me be clear on this point, we are NOT the victims here. The kids that Sandusky abused AND ONLY those kids deserve your thoughts, sympathy and prayers. The entire Penn State community however is collateral damage.

The damage to the university is incalculable; as is the pain and sadness felt by its students and alumni. We’ve been stripped of our dignity, turned in to a nationwide object of scorn and ridicule. Hundreds of thousands are suffering because of the heinous actions of one man, and the subsequent action or inaction of several others.

We suffer twice, once for the kids and once for our school. And we suffer in silence. Nobody wants to hear our pain. Our betrayal pales in comparison to the betrayal of those kids, and we all know it. If we suffer out loud we are called apologists, enablers, or worse. We are not any of those things; just hurt, confused, and profoundly sad.

We cannot defend the indefensible; nor have we tried.  It is stunning how many lives have been negatively affected by the actions of one deeply disturbed human being.

I don’t know that we will ever fully come to grips with that.  And frankly we're not ready to do so.  Right now we are dealing with profound changes to our reality; a reality we've taken as a given our entire lives.

It’s ironic that so many of us were calling for Paterno’s retirement before this happened. There was endless debate as to whether he stayed too long. Many felt, in spite of all he had done, that it was time for the Paterno era to end.

None of us wanted it to end like this.

The End of the Innocence in Happy Valley

Ask me what were the best years of my life, at least to the point where my beloved wife walked down the aisle at our wedding and I will answer without a moment’s hesitation. The four years I spent at the Pennsylvania State University.

It may sound like a cliché to call college the best years of my life but I don’t care. It was. That’s no slight to any other part of my childhood. It’s simply in deference to how much I enjoyed those four years in the place we affectionately call Happy Valley.

College is first and foremost about education but it’s so much more than that. It’s about growing up, establishing your independence and discovering who you really are as a person. It’s about having the freedom to believe unequivocally in your dreams and ideals, before such ideals are stripped from you by the harsh realities of life. It’s about the stunning metamorphosis from child to adult.

To me there was no better place for this than Happy Valley.

When I left Penn State I did so with more than a diploma. I left with a lifetime supply of experiences, memories and friends. I left with an emotional attachment that defies simple description. In those four years the University and everything it represents became more than just my Alma mater. It became part of my heart and my soul. Penn State does not define me, but it’s absolutely part of my identity. One need only inventory my clothing to understand that.

That is why I was so determined to bring my wife there last summer; cost and time commitment be damned. I wanted her to see at least once, what was so critically important to me.

To me, it was the last innocent place on earth; untouched by the noise, traffic, politics, or corruption of life. And right now that innocence is shattered, irrevocably I fear.

I never defined my Penn State experience by our football team; or by our legendary coach Joe Paterno. That was a part of it; one of many to be sure. At the same time, as I got further and further from my college years, in time and distance the football team and Paterno were the most tangible symbols I could cling to. And whether we like it or not, that team and that coach represent and define us nationally.

For as long as I can remember, that was something to be truly proud of. Sadly I doubt that will ever be the case again.

What transpired at Penn State in the last 72 hours to 13 years is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions. It involves (allegedly) a sick sexual deviant who for reasons only he can explain performed repeated acts that would disgust any sane person. It likely involves to some degree a cover up and thus the enabling of these horrific acts. Exactly how deep that cover up goes and who is ultimately involved is beyond the scope of my knowledge. And for purposes of this blog, it’s irrelevant.

Those who are responsible will pay; at minimum with their jobs, at maximum with their freedom. Jerry Sandusky will likely spend the rest of his life as a guest of the state of Pennsylvania. That is the minimum he deserves for the lives he has (allegedly) ruined. And in the end, that’s going to be a long list.

The list will include countless young men; likely far more than is reported and far more than we will ever know. It will include university personnel who dedicated significant portions of their lives to the betterment of the school. It involves Mike McQueary who undoubtedly wanted no part of this. And it very well may include the legendary coach who devoted 60 plus years of his life to that school; 60 plus years to coaching and mentoring young men.

For that I will very much mourn. In the end, Joe Paterno’s legacy may die at the hands of a man he trusted for over 30 years. It will not matter that he was neither the perpetrator of nor witness to these horrific events. He will be viewed as an enabler ostensibly because he was deemed to have not done enough to prevent it.

I hope and pray that is not the case. Not out of some misguided sense of loyalty to Paterno or Penn State mind you. I hope this because I simply do not want to believe a man who did so much good, a man who is literally the embodiment of Penn State University was in any way responsible for this.

Sadly with each passing news story my doubts grow stronger.

A lot will happen in the next few weeks, months, and years. I don’t think any of us can even begin to imagine the breadth of it. A University and its football program that has operated with unparalleled consistency for 45 some years will likely be torn apart brick by brick and rebuilt from scratch. It’s the only thing that can be done.

This is about more than that though. This is about the death of something I hold precious and dear in my heart. This is in some ways the death of a part of me. Call that over dramatization or extreme hyperbole if you like but it’s my truth. I doubt I’m alone amongst Penn State alumni.

This is a place that I love, my Alma mater; an institution that is rightfully an immense source of pride in my life. And it has suddenly become an object of nationwide scorn and ridicule. It’s about a school that has done so much for so many for so long being painted with a broad brush because of the heinous actions of a select few.

It’s about the words “for the glory of old state,” which have always meant so much to me now being used as a punch line.

And yes to some very small degree it’s about football. Understand that is the least important thing in this tragedy. At the same time it’s something that connects tens of thousands of alumni over five decades. I’ve always taken Penn State’s football history as a given. More than that, I took its future as a given. Now I’m not sure there is a future.  I'm not sure I can even watch the Nebraska game this Saturday.

I would hope even the most cynical observers can understand how painful this is to us as alumni. So much so that I cannot read the endless barrage of news stories or even draft this blog without a tear in my eyes. I’m overwhelmed with so many conflicting emotions. And worst of all, I honestly don’t trust my own instincts and convictions to evaluate what's happening.

Like most PSU alums, I’m going through the four stages of grief on this. Right now I’m on the back edge of stage one, denial, at least in regards to JoePa. I want so much to believe he’s not the bad guy in this. I want to believe I will wake up tomorrow and find this was all just an awful nightmare.

The second stage is supposed to be anger but I fear that I’ll hit depression first. I’m not a trained psychologist so I honestly don’t know if you are required to hit these stages in order. I just know how I feel. I don’t foresee acceptance and hope in the near future, not on this issue.

I understand that some might read this and infer a lack of perspective on my part. I assure you this is not the case. I understand with absolute certainty here that the greatest victims are these children. And I can assure you my sadness and grief mirrors the magnitude of the event. Life offers far greater tragedies than the spiritual death of a university and the reputation of its football coach. Trust me I understand this.

That does not diminish my sadness today. Nowhere is it written that we cannot mourn a loss, simply because there are other losses of greater magnitude. Loss is loss, hurt is hurt. I can fully appreciate the gravity of Sandusky’s alleged offenses while mourning the collateral damage to my beloved Alma mater. Such emotions are not mutually exclusive.

The last 72 hours have been awful. I doubt the next few weeks, months, or even years will be much better. Honestly I don’t know what will transpire, but I know what has so far. It’s the end of the innocence in Happy Valley. Perhaps the end of my innocence as well

A Simple Tribute to the Great Joe Paterno

When I arrived at Penn State in 1991, Joe Paterno was 65 years old and entering his 26th year as head coach. Even for the truly elite college coaches, that’s a career.

I remember feeling fortunate that Joe was still on the sidelines when I graduated 4 years later. I truly thought he might retire before I left.

That was 16 years ago.

I wonder how many Big 10 coaches have recruited players away from Penn State in those 16 years by telling them, “The old man will leave before you do.” I’m sure that many have and still do today. So think about this, JoePa is the only Big Ten head coach today who held the same title when I left Penn State.

There are certain accomplishments in sports that defy rationale explanation. I can say without hesitance that 400 wins in college football is one of them. It’s an accomplishment beyond comprehension. And it needs to be celebrated as such.

We can argue forever whether Joe has stuck around too long. Personally, I believe he has and said so last year. Alas, that’s an argument for another day. Today is a day to recognize and celebrate one of the truly great men in the history of sports.

As a Penn State alumnus, I feel a personal connection to Paterno. That makes me one of about half a million people who can say that same thing. As silly as it seems, Joe Paterno is Penn State.

I only met him once, a meeting that lasted about five seconds. I was walking south on campus on game day, Joe was walking north to the stadium. Think about that in and of itself. The legendary head coach was walking through the center of campus on game day just like every other student. I can’t imagine bumping in to Rich Rodriguez like that at Michigan.

Joe saw me, made eye contact and said “hello.” I said “good luck today coach.” He said “thank you.” It was a silly nothing moment; one that young freshmen will never forget.

When you see Joe Paterno on campus, you don’t feel like you met a legend. He’s just a nice guy from State College who happens to have coached the football team for 45 years. I’m not naïve enough to think that Joe does not have plenty of power; or that he does not use it to his advantage from time to time. So do most of the tenured professors

Again, this man has coached 45 years at Penn State won 400 games. I take great pride in my ability to express myself through words; yet I find my words are wholly inadequate to express the magnitude of this accomplishment.

I have actually read comments where people suggest he’s won that many games only because he hung around so long. Let’s consider the absurdity of that premise.

First, if it was so easy to last 45 years in coaching…at one school…there would be more than one man in the history of Division 1 football who has done it. Most coaches are happy to last five to ten years. In my lifetime, Pitt has never had a coach reach ten years on the job. If they don’t win enough they get fired. If they win too much they run to greener pastures or retire. We celebrate the likes of Nick Saban; even as he has bailed on three other programs.

Second, even if you argue that Joe has unparalleled job security, he earned it by averaging over 9 wins per season, for 45 years! That includes four undefeated seasons, two national champions (officially) and not a single losing season until the late 80s. And remember, this was not Bill Guthrie taking over a legendary North Carolina program from Dean Smith. Penn State was pretty much irrelevant in college football before JoePa arrived.

You could say that Joe built the Penn State program. I would say that Joe is the Penn State program.

I ate in the same dining hall as many of the football players. Everyone knew who they were. You could not miss Kyle Brady or Ki-Jana Carter on campus. They never acted like football stars; they acted like regular Penn State students. That’s what Joe demands of them. His players graduate at rates amongst the highest in division 1 football and for the most part comport themselves as good citizens. In comparison to the cesspool that often is major college football, the Nittany Lions are angels.

Again, I’m not naïve enough to pretend there have been no off the field issues. Joe can set and enforce rules but he can not force 95 college men to act perfectly all the time. No coach can, just as no parent can. That’s life.

And I’m sure that from time to time, Joe has allowed a star player more latitude than a back-up or regular student would get. I say that even though I remember Bobby Engram being suspended for his entire freshmen season and Curtis Enis and Joe Jeruvicious being suspended from a bowl game.

Joe Paterno is not perfect, as a person or coach. And we don’t ask him to be.

Still, how does Joe compare to Urban Meyer, whose players continually end up on the police blotter and then right back on the field. How does he compare to Tom Osborne who sold out all of his principles and beliefs to win a national championship, a championship that he stole from Paterno? How does he compare to Rodriguez or Pete Carroll?

This is a man who has never sold out his core principles, a man who never made football more than what it is. Yes I’m frustrated by what I consider the relative mediocrity of the program the last decade. And yet I’ll take that in a second over selling out Penn State principles to try and win another national championship.

Think again about those astonishing 400 wins. Now add 6 national championships. Joe has two but he could just as easily have six. This is a man who has presided over four undefeated teams that were denied a national title in college football’s mythical sham of a championship system. And people wonder why I hate the BCS so much?

The funny part is, I think the 1994 debacle bothers me more than it does Joe. I’m still bitter and angry about it to this day. I get the feeling Joe dealt with it and moved on. That may have been the greatest offense in college football history. They would have put up 50 on the Thug Huskers if given the chance. Sadly they never were.

Such is life I guess.

I’ve spent the last 16 years lamenting the national championship that was stolen from us my senior year. Joe Paterno has spent the last 16 years molding kids in to men. I wonder how many kids he’s effected; I wonder how many he’s been a father figure to. Honestly, the numbers are likely too staggering to contemplate.

Just like 400 wins.

Joe Paterno has spent his entire adult life at Penn State. He never left for more money, his dream job or the NFL. He has worked for far less money than most division 1 star coaches, and donated a great deal of it to the University. There are countless stories from regular students about some way Joe impacted their lives.

He does not brag about this; does not act holier than thou. He just lives his life the same way he has for nearly 60 years in Happy Valley.

He has two black marks against him; staying on a bit too long and playing some role in ending the Pitt and Penn State rivalry. If those are the two worst things we can say about this man in 45 years of coaching, that’s not too bad. It’s a lot better than, “reinstated a player who dragged his girlfriend down the steps by her hair.” Strictly hypothetical of course.

I know I’m biased here. I can’t help it. I’m a Nittany Lion through and through. I have no reservations in saying that Joe Paterno is one of the most remarkable human beings in the history of sports.

I’m not ashamed to say that I had tears in my eyes as I watched the man we affectionately call JoePa celebrate his 400th victory on Saturday. I’m guessing I was not alone in the Nittany Nation. It was an emotional day, the magnitude of which we may never fully appreciate.

I fervently believe that it is time for JoePa to retire. I know that its time for the program to move forward, that it needs an infusion of youth, vigor and new ideas. And yet even as I say that I can not imagine Penn State without him. Not just Penn State football, Penn State University. There are so few constants in this world. For 45 years, Joe Paterno on the Penn State sideline has been one of them.

I offer my heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Joseph Vincent Paterno on a remarkable accomplishment and a remarkable career. For the Glory….