Book Paints Picture of a Devastated Paterno

http://pennstate.scout.com/ ^ | 8/15/2012 | Mark Brennan

[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

[DuncanWaring]

Demonstrating again that Paterno effectively said “I’ve done my duty. If the administration wants to cover this up, who am I to say No?”.

[Uncle Chip]

I don’t know how you draw that conclusion from what I have posted from the Freeh Report, but “I’ve done my duty. If you want to conclude otherwise, who am I to say No.”

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Football was Paterno’s life, nothing else mattered or at least nothing mattered near as much, that was most likely the reason he was such a successful coach and ironically what ended up taking him down. His greatest strength also proved to be his greatest weakness and he ended up paying the price for it. I guess if there is a moral to the story it's not to get focused so much on something you love that you lose site of the “big picture” and what's really important in life.

It's called a "fatal flaw" and has been a part of drama and literature since the ancient Greeks. Elizabethan drama (including Shakespeare) was especially fond it it as a dramatic device. Macbeth's ambition propels him to glory and then drags him to destruction.

This is the problem with modern society's ignorance of the classics (in part because the liberal mind declares that the past doesn't matter... "they aren't me; I'm different"... the cry of a perpetual adolescent). This feature of humanity has been warned against for millennia... yet we treat it like it is a new discovery...

[dfwgator]

One thing Paterno and Bear Bryant had in common, both were dead within months of the end of their coaching careers.

[IrishBrigade]

Do you even bother to read your own posts??? They just might answer your rhetorical questions.

...you know, chipper, at one point in your posting history I might have agreed you had good points to make, but now I retract that sentiment, based on this latest missive of yours...you note, I’m sure, that I stated that I myself did not know how to get rid of an emeritus...but Joe, being a decades old godhead on campus, would have known myriad ways to do so...you are woodenheaded beyond repair, a chip off the old block, so to speak, if you’re suggesting that I contradicted my own post...but I’ll withhold judgement on that until later...

[Uncle Chip]

.but Joe, being a decades old godhead on campus, would have known myriad ways to do so.

And yet that "decades old godhead on campus" with all this alleged power couldn't get his way back in 1998 when it came to keeping Sandusky's 2nd Mile kids out of his football facilities. The administration that supposedly bowed to his every wishes overruled him. [Post # 80]