When a man battling lung cancer dies at the age of 85, you shouldn't be shocked. Yet it was shockingly sudden when former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died on Sunday morning. The tragic story of Penn State football refuses to be defined by boundries. JoePa, the disgraced and heartbroken hero of Happy Valley, is gone.
Months ago when the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal hit State College, Paterno's lack of leadership in pursuing the matter cost him his job and a reputation he crafted over six decades of service to the university. Paterno wasn't just the football coach. He was JoePa, the father figure, the creator of a code of conduct that for many years separated Penn State from the crowd, the most influential person in Pennsylvania.
It is a measure of the severity of the alleged crimes the coach was accused of fostering that so much was lost and forgotten in a matter of days. It can be argued that the coach died that week in November.
The national media weighed in Monday. Mike Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press wrote, "Lives are not jury trials; we should not expect a verdict at the end. Paterno was never the saint his worshipers made him out to be, and he was certainly not the devil his loudest recent critics have portrayed."
"I hope the ages treat him kindly," wrote Mike Lopresti of USA Today. "The ages are often more logical and thoughtful than blogs and talk shows."
Others were more harsh. "Nothing in his life was more important than his grim, cowardly silence. There is no counterbalancing the moral ledger, or any mitigation by anything related to football," according to Dan Bernstein of CBSChicago.com.
It is said that good triumphs evil. Human nature suggests otherwise. The bad always outweighs the good. John Kennedy once pulled us from the brink of nuclear war, but we remember an affair with Marilyn Monroe. To Bill Clinton's enlightened presidency we attach the name Monica Lewinski. Ohio State football legend Woody Hayes punched an opposing player during a game 33 years ago. Lee Evans dropped a touchdown pass. Scott Norwood was wide right. Bill Buckner made an error. Barry Bonds used steroids. Joe Paterno failed to act.
Few have fallen so far so fast. Paterno died without coming clean. He failed to avail himself the opportunity for a defense, something now left to others.
I most prefer what Bill Livingston of the Cleveland Plain Dealer had to say about Paterno's passing. "It was not the way a good man should leave a life in which he did so much to enhance the circumstances of others. Paterno lost sight of his mission. It should not make us forget the decades in which he honored it."
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