Writers discuss Joe Paterno’s legacy

STATE COLLEGE — It’s been nearly six years since Penn State lost one of its most influential leaders, and easily its most visible figure.

The debate continues to rage over the legacy of Joe Paterno’s reputation, from people who believe he was unjustly tarnished by the fallout from the Sandusky abuse scandal and that his statue should be put back in front of Beaver Stadium, to people who hold him fully accountable for the perpetrated abuse and failure of follow-through, and everyone in between.

On Oct. 17, three writers from different backgrounds — but whose careers are all steeped in Penn State history — talked about what Paterno’s legacy will be in coming years and what has already changed since the scandal and his death. It was the last session in a class offered by Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the Paterno family lawsuit against the NCAA.

Paterno was fired in November 2011 in the wake of the grand jury indictment of Sandusky on multiple counts of child molestation. The investigation led to the resignations or firings of top administrators.

The major debate concerning Paterno is what and when he knew about Sandusky. Some people have come forward as victims and said they brought it to his attention decades ago. Others believe when he passed the claims up the administrative chain he did his duty. Yet others believe he didn’t follow through when he should have, since it was his football program.

The guest speakers at the OLLI class didn’t address their beliefs concerning the core debate, and stuck to the legacy of Paterno and his family and their impact on the school through the coach's 46 years at Penn State.

Michael Bezilla has written multiple history books on Penn State and Pennsylvania railroads. He compared Paterno and his legacy to the legacies of the great Penn State presidents.

Bezilla said Paterno had the ability to get the public, legislators and other stakeholders to buy into the ideas of Penn State as a great institution, much like former presidents Evan Pugh, George Atherton, Eric Walker and Bryce Jordan. Each of those presidents made critical advancements, Bezilla said, and were men who had the foresight to imagine what Penn State could become in the future.

He told the story of how Paterno addressed the board of trustees in 1983, saying Penn State should use its newfound football momentum to raise money and pivot toward more philanthropic measures of raising money. So began the Campaign for Penn State. The university now has a $3.6 billion endowment. “Take a walk across campus and see how successful it’s become,” Bezilla said.

He said the reputations of leaders can be an advantage, and the qualities of the leader become qualities of the institution. But when that face of the franchise falls into disfavor and is perceived in a negative light, it leaves a question of what happens to an institution.

“Paterno was the face of the Penn State franchise, and he is seen now in a negative light in certain quarters,” Bezilla said during a question-and-answer session. “I'm not saying it's warranted or not warranted. But, I think one reason, among many, that we are in such a quandary about how to deal with this is to look at the other great leaders of Penn State. They were never in a negative light.”

John “Jack” Selzer is a Paterno Family Liberal Arts Professor of Literature. He outlined some of the major contributions of the Paterno family to the liberal arts.

He joked that since no one graduates from a library, fewer people are willing to donate money to one. The Paterno family changed all of that, raising tens of millions of dollars and putting the Penn State library on the map as one of the best in the country.

That money allowed professors like Selzer to be better at their jobs and opened up opportunities for students who otherwise wouldn’t have experiences such as studying abroad.

“It's literally more money than I know how to use,” he said. “So, it has helped me become the faculty member that I could only ever dream about being.”

Selzer was one of the organizers of the Paterno Fellows Program, which allows students not in the Schreyer Honors College to do honors college work in their first year and be admitted later on. He said the program noticed many students were capable of doing the work, but didn’t get into the honors college in their first year or didn’t know it existed. The program also requires students to go above and beyond and do additional work and study abroad.

“This is very popular for us,” Selzer said. “Obviously, it's helped us build our student body tremendously and to bring out the best in the students we have.”

He said that while it doesn’t have to bear the Paterno name, at the time it was the values they believed the family embodied as patrons of the liberal arts. The Paterno family contributed greatly to the fellows program and provided students the opportunities even if they couldn’t afford them.

Though Selzer’s career centers around the library, he said he believes one of Paterno’s greatest achievement was helping Penn State enter the Big 10 in 1990. He contends Penn State would not have been as interesting without the football program Paterno built, and thus helped the university’s chances greatly in entry to the oldest collegiate athletic conference in the U.S.

“When we got into the Big 10, it changed the whole mentality of the school,” Selzer said. “Our alums, of course, stepped up tremendously.”

So while the university always had something to brag about, Selzer said, after joining the Big 10, Penn State became a major force to be reckoned with in the national and international higher education scene.

“Part of it also is, suddenly we became an aspirational school. We’re going to be great. There was a sense up until 2011, I would say, there was a sense in which we were something special and we do things a little differently here and we are a school on the make. We are not accepting our position in the hierarchy.”

Now in the wake of scandal, he said he believes Penn State has lost some of the aspirational qualities of that era, even if the material benefits are still evident.

“Everybody who works at Penn State and enjoys the tremendous working conditions and salary and so on has something to owe to the Paterno family for that.”

Mike Poorman has been writing about and teaching Penn State athletics in the media for 40 years. Currently, he is the alumni director in the College of Communications.

The beginnings of his career date to his time covering football for the Daily Collegian in 1979. He later taught a course at Penn State called "Joe Paterno: Communications in the Media.”

“As you would imagine, Penn State students through the years had a great relationship with Joe, a personal relationship with Joe.”

He said an exercise he used to do with his class was gather their perceptions of Paterno.

“It was stunning. Almost 40 percent of the kids had a personal interaction with Joe Paterno, from going to his house, to walking across campus, to being yelled at by Joe for jaywalking.”

In freshman seminar class, he said he had students report what drew them to Penn State. Up until 2010, he said football and Paterno were often in students’ top three reasons for attending the university.

“I don't want to say Paterno is a non-entity, but he is a non-starter. For a kid who is coming in who is 18, six years ago, seven years ago, they were not aware. Right now, comparing Paterno 10 years ago, 20 years ago, students perceptions versus now, Joe is not on their radar screen.”

While the perception is mixed between negative and recognition of the legacy, he said with new students it can be as if Paterno was at Penn State 50 years ago.

As for the media, he said national and local media members have made up their minds on Paterno’s legacy and are firmly entrenched in those positions.

He discussed the unavoidable evoking of Paterno’s name as context for covering the storied football program. Of the perhaps 150 people who will cover a football game for the media, he said very few will ever bring up Paterno during press conferences and younger writers are shy about using him in historical context in regards to football.

“It is amazing to me the number of people who write about Penn State football and, in many ways, it’s as if Joe did not exist.”

As we all know, the “MSM” is biased; IMHO it not merely biased by systematically cynical. Exactly as socialism is systematically cynical.
The key to understanding why cynicism directed at society maps to naive faith in government is found in Paine’s Common Sense: skepticism about society is the only justification for the “evil” of government force.
The above article shows that Joe Paterno was an institution, an integral part of the institution known as Penn State University and dedicated to the mission of the university. Consequently the Sandusky scandal inevitably damaged society by damaging that institution.
I wasn’t in the locker room when the seeds of the scandal were sown. But I do know that damaging society is what cynicism does - and what the MSM, and the rest of “liberalism,” does.

I live in PA, formerly from the People’s Republic of MD, and I just don’t understand how anyone can defend Paterno at this point. He was notified of this behavior and didn’t do enough about it.

So, he contacted the school authorities. Big deal! The whole thing stinks, and likely includes people still involved with the university.

“So, he contacted the school authorities. Big deal! The whole thing stinks, and likely includes people still involved with the university.”

“Sports figures” are given passes for stuff that ordinary folks would be taken to task for. Morons who “love sports” have the problem of always putting their mouths in gear before engaging their brains.
I had a professional engineer who was a “sports fan” who worked for me. He told me that “he knew OJ Simpson didn’t kill his wife and Ron Goldman because he was a sports figure!” And sadly, these people get to vote too!

IMO, Paterno was way out of his depth when confronted with Sandusky’s misdeeds. Went fully into denial. Wanted everything to “just go away.”

As for his sports legacy, consider this. Joe Paterno killed eastern college football when he made Penn State join the Big 10. All about him, cloaked in “making Penn State great.”

I’d like to help you kids but we have to beat Nebraska

The whole article is about creating an educational institution with a world class library, and enhanced educational opportunity for the “kids.”
And all you care about is tearing down that institution. Because you are a cynic.

From Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech at the Sarbonne:
There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Joe didn’t know or he would have stopped it. Anything else is a lie. When Sandusky was coaching, there was an investigation, early on, by the authorities and it turned up nothing....so Joe moved on. The local and state authorities found nothing....so there wasn’t anything for Joe to do. You can’t fire someone over a rumor.....especially when two different entities investigated the situation and found nothing. Then when McQueary thought he saw or heard or whatever he experienced, Joe turned it over to the authorities.....as he is supposed to do. Follow the law. Sandusky was already retired by then. The facts support this as he was not charged while others were. He never really liked Jerry or Jerry’s involvement with the Second Mile charity.

Paterno is an easy scapegoat for the uninformed. Shame on Free Republic.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.