Speaking Ill of the Dead: Joe Paterno
The legacy of Joe Paterno is a master class in the failure of the blind eye. When the view became inconvenient, Joe simply traded his thick Coke-bottle glasses for a pair of institutional shutters, and tripped himself up.
For sixty-one years Joe stalked the sidelines of Beaver Stadium like a frantic librarian trying to organize a riot, khaki trousers rolled just high enough to keep his ankles clear if he stepped in anything untoward. The look suggested discipline and the faint possibility that he might shush a linebacker.
Joe’s proudest creation was Success With Honor, a slogan that worked much like camouflage netting over a tank. From a distance it looked noble. Up close it concealed an entire armored division.
During Joe’s reign Penn State developed the atmosphere of a small monarchy in which football served as both religion and zoning authority. The police occasionally appeared to function less as law enforcement and more as an institutional dry-cleaning service for the athletic department. Stains were removed. Garments were returned. Everyone admired the crisp press.
Joe’s influence was so pervasive that even the squirrels in State College seemed to chatter in defensive schemes and plausible deniability. He did not merely coach a team. He curated a mythology and sold season tickets.
When trouble in the person of Jerry Sandusky in a shower room arrived, Joe passed the buck with the touch of a quarterback who knows exactly when to release the ball while the offensive line collapses. Technically the play has moved on. The bruises belong to someone else.
For decades a statue of Joe Paterno stood outside Beaver Stadium, bronze and reassuring, like a civic monument to moral certainty. It suggested that virtue could be measured in bowl appearances.
The statue is gone now. Statues have a funny weakness for facts. The pedestal remains, which is probably for the best. Pedestals are educational objects. They remind us how easily a community can hoist a man high enough that no one bothers looking down to see what he is standing in.
Joe Paterno spent a lifetime constructing a monument to himself. In the end the same crowd that built it quietly took it apart.
That is not tragedy.
That is the final score.
If you enjoy reading about the games and the gamesters who play them, here are more sporting life tales of gore and glory.