JoePa has the Right to Determine His Own Fate
January 2006
By VINCENT P. CAROCCI
So what’s the guy supposed to do? Joe Pa, that is. What
exactly is Joe Paterno supposed to do now that his 2005 Penn State football team
1)- finished its season with an 11-1 record; 2)-was co-champion of the Big 10
Football Conference; 3)-won a 26-23 victory over Florida State in the Orange
Bowl; 4)-was ranked the Number 3 collegiate team in the country; and 5)-he,
himself, won two Coach of the Year awards?
We know what his choices are: To step aside after 40 years at the Nittany Lion
helm, as his growing list of critics most likely would have it; or to press on
into 2006, (and perhaps beyond) as his legion of loyal admirers would allow, to
show whether this remarkable turnaround (after four losing seasons in the last
five and a very disappointing 26-38 record in that span) is really as complete
and as durable as he and they hope it is.
We also know for certain he will not lack for advice, solicited or unsolicited,
from either group. I, for one, long have been firmly among the admirers and I
admit: I am torn on the subject.
I first was introduced to Joe Paterno almost 50 years ago. I was a pink-cheeked
freshman at Penn State and an aspiring sports writer on the University’s student
newspaper, The Daily Collegian. He was a key assistant on the staff of the late
Rip Engle. I came to know Joe Paterno much better when as a junior I was the
paper’s assistant sports editor and as a senior, the sports editor, and Penn
State football was part of my beat. He was always accessible, always helpful,
always congenial. It was impossible not to like the man.
No one of whom I am aware has done more over the course of a prolonged,
laudatory and highly visible career to promote the merits of competitive
collegiate athletics and the good name of the University he represents than Joe
Paterno. There may be some who, it might be argued, have done as much. But there
is none who has done more.
Yet the new millenium has not been kind to this good man. The losing seasons…the
off-field incidents involving his players…the death of a brother…the undeniable
clamor for his ouster from his critics in the press box and in the stands…even,
as he himself revealed, a late-season visit in 2004 from his president and his
athletic director (and two other unidentified administrators) suggesting—not so
subtly, apparently—that it might be time for him to step aside.
Paterno, predictably for this proud (some might suggest, stubborn) man, has been
as deaf to his critics as he has been steadfast in his determination to coach on
and right his program. I have no quarrel with that, nor should others. What’s
most troubling to me is that, real or imagined, the Joe Paterno I see, hear and
read about now is not the Joe Paterno I came to know so long ago.
The Joe Paterno I came to know in the late 50’s as a student and, a decade later
as a staff member in the university’s public information offices, was always
intensely competitive and demanding of his players. But he brought a balanced
perspective to the sport—the thrill of competition for competition’s sake—that
few others in his coaching fraternity exhibited. Football at Penn State under
Paterno was “fun,” if the University’s sports PR apparatus was to be believed.
(His players usually demurred. Football under Paterno was not so much fun as
hard work and commitment and they had the bruises to show for it, they said
privately,) But much of the nation’s sports writing establishment bought into
the line because of who he was and how he conducted himself on and off the
field. That was the Joe Paterno I came to know.
The Paterno I came to know had an excellent relationship with the press. He
understood and respected the role of the press in sports and was most
cooperative and congenial with its practitioners, including this young man
struggling daily to turn out a professional sports page for a college newspaper.
He was quotable and he was truthful. He was always in command of what he
said—assured, confident, likeable, precise, polite and, usually, very much on
point. There was (and, I believe, still is) nothing phony about the guy. So the
press, in turn, respected him for who he was and the job he was doing.
Above all, there was something admirable in the way he committed himself to his
career, his players and the challenges and opportunities the sport presented to
both. I remember vividly a glorious Saturday morning in 1969, hours before a
very much-anticipated Homecoming contest against a pretty good West Virginia
football team. I was driving home from Saturday office hours when I spotted
Paterno leaving the University creamery with another man (his brother-in-law, I
believe) casually licking an ice cream cone, walking serenely among the hundreds
of visitors to the campus that day.
I remember asking him about that in his post-game chat with the press corps—it
was more of a conversation than a press conference in those days. How, I wanted
to know, could he be so calm and collected before such a big game. I’ll never
forget his response. “Vinny,” he told me in that distinctive Brooklyn accent of
his, “it’s a beautiful day, on a beautiful college campus, before a big game
that thousands of people (57,713, to be exact) will watch from the stands
against a good football team. Why shouldn’t someone enjoy the moment for what it
was?” Penn State won the game, 20-0, so it was easy to be magnanimous. But no
one in the assembled press corps doubted the sincerity of the man and his
answer.
That’s the Joe Paterno I came to know. Not the Paterno I see now on television,
prowling the sidelines, curmudgeonly, looking angry, berating officials, or his
staff, sometimes both; not the Paterno I hear about or read about telling the
press—arrogant, smug, and self-absorbed as so many of them too often seem to
be--that he doesn’t trust them anymore; and, what’s more, he doesn’t pay any
attention to what they have to say about him; not the Paterno who would ever
call an official “dumb” in public as he did at the pre-game Orange Bowl rally in
Miami; or permit himself a casual quip when asked about a Florida State player
who was suspended and sent home after allegations of sexual assault were leveled
against him days before the game.
I suppose that’s what happens in the aging process. We aren’t as on top of our
game as we once were. I see it in myself (turned 69 in December), and I see it
happening to this man (turned 79 in December) whom I have admired for so long.
So where do I come down on the question, what should he do? I guess in the camp
with Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post. Wilbon, like me, respects everything
good Joe Paterno has done in so many ways for so long for college athletics and
his university. He, like me, worries about people (be it in entertainment,
politics, sports, whatever) who stay too long on the stage. He, like me, worries
that nothing untoward occurs in future years to embarrass Paterno the way Woody
Hayes at Ohio State or Bobby Knight at Indiana were embarrassed by their conduct
and, thus, diminish his many, many contributions and his reputation. And if
asked, I believe he, like me, would suggest to Coach Paterno that it is good to
leave gracefully with all that in tact, and there might never be a better time
to do it.
But I suspect Paterno will continue to coach Penn State. His critics will
allege, “sotto voce,” most likely, that he’s afraid to step aside for fear of
dying shortly thereafter as was the fate of another collegiate football coaching
giant, Alabama’s Bear Bryant. There may be some truth to that. But I happen to
think there’s another reason, a larger reason compelling him to press on. If
Paterno coaches in 2006, he will tie the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg for the
record of serving the longest consecutive tenure as head football coach at one
institution—41 at the University of Chicago. If he coaches into 2007, he will
break that record.
If that’s his goal…to add even more luster and legitimacy to an already
distinguished career…so be it. By his reputation and his many good works through
these many years, Paterno has earned the right to pursue it. Those of us who
know him, even from a distance as I do, should wish him well and, above all,
smooth sailing.
# # # # #
Copyright (c) 2008 VPC, L.L.C.