Posted on 08/16/2012 7:19:10 AM PDT by BO Stinkss
Joe Paterno was an emotional wreck the day after he was fired as Penn State football coach, according to excerpts from the upcoming book “Paterno.” The biography by author Joe Posnanski is due to be released Aug. 21, and GQ offered several excerpts from the book Wednesday. In one excerpt, Posnanski said Paterno “sobbed uncontrollably” when he met with his former staff Nov. 10, the day after he was fired. This was five days after child sex abuse charges were brought against former Nittany Lion assistant Jerry Sandusky, leading to Paterno, school president Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim Curley all losing their jobs.
In the book, Posnanski writes of Paterno: “This was his bad day. Later, one of his former captains, Brandon Short, stopped by the house. When Brandon asked, 'How are you doing, Coach?' Paterno answered, 'I'm okay,' but the last syllable was shaky, muffled by crying, and then he broke down and said, 'I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.'
A former writer for Sports Illustrated, Posnanski was granted unprecedented access to Paterno for the book. But that agreement was struck long before the Sandusky scandal exploded and rocked the program Paterno spent some 45 years building.
Paterno was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly after being fired and died in January of this year.
The excerpts released by GQ focus on the volatile end of Paterno's coaching career, including his family coming to grips with the vast number of charges against Sandusky and a public relations specialist attempting to “negotiate a gracious ending” to Paterno's storied coaching career.
A source close to the Paterno family, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the book covers the Hall of Fame coach's entire life, and not just the final few months. He added that certain members of the family have read proofs of the book and seem to be OK with it.
“It's fair,” the source said. “It's a good book. There are a lot of things in there I didn't even know.”
The source added that Posnanski does not make any judgement calls in the book, but rather asks readers to read what he wrote and then come to their own conclusions
Poor Joepa. Here is the most successful coach who should have retired in grace and honors, but was forced to take the fall. I cannot imagine what it was for him to deal in his final days. Nobody even talks about the real victim in this. Such a storied career taken down with such brutality. sarcasm
>Not sure I agree with that. How many more children were molested because of what Joe and the rest of them could have done but did not do. There’s plenty of blame for a lot of people including Joe.
I would say he did exactly the bare minimum he could get away with doing without putting himself in legal jeopardy. Paterno was one step below Christ at Penn State, if he had wanted Sandusky gone, he would have been gone. One call to the local authorities or the college president saying, "I have a pervert on my staff molesting children in the shower room and I want him locked up now!" and the authorities would have falling all over themselves to help "Joepa".
I suppose we will never know how much blame he really deserves, my general impression is that he was treated something like the President, where his staff kept many of the controversial issues away from him for "plausible deniability". But it was clear he at least knew something about what was going on and choose to treat it like an annoying distraction that could hurt his precious legacy if it went public. The ironic thing is, if he would have went public and done every thing in his power to get rid of Sandusky the day the first allegation surfaced. Not only would we be celebrating him as a great football coach, but as a great person who wasn't afraid to risk his own reputation to take out a child molester. Instead his attempts to protect his legacy ended up destroying it.
I feel more sorry for Jerry’s victims.
What if the pervert coach were just some Grad Assistant, instead of the Defensive Genius that made Penn State “Linebacker U”, and had as much to do with Penn State’s on field success as Paterno?
Does anyone really believe Paterno didn’t have unrivaled power on that campus and a memo to the university board of his express intents to fire Sandusky and report him to local authorities would’ve been ignored?
Bad news isn’t wine... it doesn’t get better with age. That’s one principle the vaunted Paterno didn’t bother to follow.
How do you know he didn’t?
“It is a simple question, were those tears of regret as he realized that he had failed to do what he should have done to stop Sandusky or tears of sorrow that he’d been held responsible?”
Neither. Those tears were probably tears of ruined legacy.
I wonder if his butt hurt?
Exactly. He had two options: 1) Use every bit of moral and legal authority to fire Sandusky and ensure that university goes full-bore public on the matter, replete with a promise to fully cooperate with ALL investigations on the matter; or 2) Cover it up and roll the dice in the hopes the code of locker-room secrecy holds.
Well, it's quite clear which path he took. Shame on him, and everyone around him who knew.
bet some of them kids were pretty devastated, too. only they didn’t have legions of fans to support them, nor could they even show their devastation...
Oh well, that’s too damn bad.
Burn in Hell, Joe.
Let’s say it had been me in that position, and then my initial report went nowhere.
Let’s then conjecture that I subsequently inquired “Why in the name of God is this child molester still running around the campus?”
If in fact that had happened, last year when the whole sordid affair became public, I would have been screaming from the rooftops “I TRIED TO GET THIS GUY STOPPED - NOBODY WOULD LISTEN!”.
Did JP do that?
No.
That’s how I know he didn’t.
Those words were deliberately chosen.
He would send someone who looked the other way
That is the biggest crock of crap ever written on Free Republic. You should be ashamed of yourself for being so nasty and completely inaccurate. He did 100 percent what he was supposed to do by law. Now you better apologize (not to me but to Joe Paterno and his family for your libel).
bet some of them kids were pretty devastated, too. only they didn’t have legions of fans to support them, nor could they even show their devastation...
I bet some of them are lying for the big pay day that they are about to get.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but a number of people went to JoPa and told him what they heard about Sandusky, and also what the SAW Sandusky doing in the locker room . . . I didn't make this up . . . and JoPa didn't do $hit about it.
My sympathies go to the poor victims of Sandusky's perverted behavior and JoPa's looking-the-other-way. It's hard to say what I'd do to JoPa if one of MY kids had been sodomized by Sandusky and after going to JoPa with my concerns, he'd either ignore it or look the other way.
I’d say laweeks assessment of the situation is probably quite accurate.
Some probably are.
What about the ones that aren't?
Can you imagine going to work for years and this retired colleague who you know rapes little boys is walking down the hallway towards you and you’re like, “Hey. What’s up dude?”
Easy for you to say. Did you have that ugly creep Sandusky’s hot breath and drool on the back of your neck?
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