(CNN) -- He's known to generations of football fans simply as JoePa, the hard-nosed football coach who peers through his trademark thick eyeglasses and sees something more in the young men he coaches -- and demands they see it, too.
In 46 years as Penn State's head coach, Joe Paterno has amassed a reputation not only as a football wizard -- he's won more games than any other major-school coach -- but for his focus on academics and civics.
"He teaches his players how to win in life as well as football, and he teaches every Penn State fan how to make the world a better place through integrity, honesty and excellence," Penn State alumnus and donor Patrick Malloy said in 2007 in committing $5 million to a university endowment bearing Paterno's name, according to the coach's official Penn State biography.
After five decades, that reputation seems at peril of unraveling amid concern over Paterno's reaction to a graduate assistant's 2002 report that he had seen former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky performing anal sex on a young boy in the shower room of the football complex.
On Tuesday, Paterno's son, Scott Paterno, said on Twitter that reports in the New York Times, citing people briefed on the matter, that university officials were planning an end to Paterno's 46-year coaching tenure were "premature."
"No discussions about retirement with JVP," Paterno said, using his father's initials.
Paterno said Sunday in a statement that he'd never been told the graphic details revealed in the grand jury report but that he nevertheless passed the allegations on to his boss. He had, he said in the statement, done "what I was supposed to."
Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly said Monday that Paterno is not a target of the investigation, which has resulted in charges against two top university officials accused of failing to report the abuse, in addition to Sandusky.
But that may not help restore what had until this week been a shining reputation, SI.com columnist Michael Rosenberg writes on the website.
"We don't yet know who is legally guilty," he said. "But several prominent employees at the state university are morally guilty. And one of them is Joe Paterno."
Paterno, 84, began his career at Penn State in 1950 as a 23-year-old assistant under head coach Rip Engle.
Sixteen years later, he took the reins of the Nittany Lions football program, beginning a head coaching career that has netted him 409 wins, five undefeated seasons, two national titles and a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame.
He also put a premium on academic achievement. Paterno contributed $3.5 million to the university in 1998, endowing faculty positions in liberal arts, architecture, landscape architecture and the university's library system, according to his bio. He also helped fund an interfaith spiritual center and a sports museum.
He also has challenged his own athletes to succeed academically. His 2009 team had an 89% graduation rate, and his teams have produced dozens of academic award and scholarship winners, according to his bio.
"Coach Paterno was absolutely instrumental in my life in showing me and teaching me that there are no cutting corners," Tom Bill, who played quarterback at Penn State in the late 1980s and early 1990s, told CNN in 2004.
Paterno became embroiled in the Sandusky saga when, in 2002, a graduate assistant came to him to report a disturbing scene he had witnessed the night before, according to a grand jury report released last week.
According to the report, the assistant told Paterno that he saw Sandusky in the shower with a boy who looked to be about 10 years old. Sandusky was having sex with the child, according to the grand jury report and prosecutors.
The distraught assistant ran from the building and called his father, who advised him to report the incident to Paterno, according to the grand jury and prosecutors.
The next day, Paterno passed the report up to his boss, Athletic Director Tim Curley, saying -- according to the grand jury report -- that the graduate assistant had told him he had seen Sandusky "fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy."
The reports never made it to police.
Curley and another university official who learned of the 2002 incident, Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, have been charged with failing to report the abuse to authorities and misleading the grand jury investigating Sandusky's conduct.
Paterno has not spoken to the press about the incident and canceled his weekly news conference Tuesday.
In his Sunday statement, Paterno said he did his duty in referring the allegations to his superior but said the assistant never "related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report."
"If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families," he said in the statement.
Kelly says prosecutors believe that Paterno met his responsibilities under state law by reporting the incident to his boss, but that has not stopped a rising chorus of calls for his resignation.
In a letter to the editor of Penn State's student newspaper, The Daily Collegian, freshman Sarah Kurtz said she chose the school based on its record of integrity and wrote of her "absolute disgust" that the accusations had not been handled more forcefully.
"If Penn State wants to fix this now I believe it is urgent that they ask every guilty member from Penn State President Graham Spanier to coach Joe Paterno to step down from their positions gracefully to save the name of the university and the degree I will eventually earn."
SI.com Executive Editor B.J. Schecter said Monday on CNN that the allegations can't help but harm Paterno's reputation.
"Everything he's done and all the games he's won, it doesn't matter," Schecter said. And that's what everybody is saying. You can win the most games in Division 1 history, but if you don't do what's right and protect children and turn someone in that you may have been very close to, then that supersedes everything you've done on the football field."
Source: CNN
0 comments:
Post a Comment