Fifty-five years, in fact. All of them in State College, where the spaghetti sauce has improved over the years, where the homes and the shops and the classroom buildings now spread out to once-unimaginable distances, where his new office is twice as large as his first residence, where his children had been born and had become parents themselves.
“Nobody could have had things go better for them than me,” Paterno said after the 2004 season. “I’ve got my health. . . . I’ve never missed a practice day in all the years, except when my son was hurt and when my dad died. I’ve got a great wife, great kids, a great university. I’ve got everything.”
Everything, perhaps, but time.
As another season neared, the old literature major had to be contemplating his morality. Age was a circumstance all his work, all his past glories couldn’t change. “They told me I was everything,” King Lear had said. “ ’Tis a lie.”
He certainly seemed to recognize the urgency of his situation. Asked during a fund-raiser in Pittsburgh how long he would continue to coach if Penn State did not produce victories, he was surprisingly blunt.
“If we don’t win some games,” he said, “I’ve got to get my rear end out of here. Simple as that. We have a team that can go out there and do some things we haven’t done in the last few years. I think if we do that, fine. If we don’t, I think I have to back away and say, ‘Hey, I’m not doing the job.’ And it would be easy for me to back away. Well, as far as financially and the whole bit. I’m not a forty-year-old guy trying to create a career for himself.”
He was a seventy-eight-year-old guy at the end of one.
Three days before his fifty-fifth Christmas in State College, on the morning that Williams revealed his college choice, Penn State officials said Paterno was relaxing at home. While he might have been at home, it was doubtful he was relaxing.
More likely, he was sitting in his den, watching football videos and drawing up plays, safe again within the crucifix’s shadow.
Author’s Note
WRITING AN UNAUTHORIZED BOOK on Joe Paterno is a lot like being a linebacker defending against one of those sweeps his Nittany Lions love to run: You’ve got to keep your head up at all times, fight off wave after wave of interference, and never take your eyes off the target, no matter how well-protected and untouchable he might seem.
A culture of secrecy looms over Penn State. For decades, journalists, civic groups, and even its own faculty members have fought unsuccessfully to open up the university’s budget and files. That mentality is reflected in Paterno’s program. Much to the annoyance of generations of authors, sportswriters, fans, and NFL scouts, he has constructed a nearly impenetrable wall around Penn State football. He emerges from behind it only long enough to perform his weekly media and public-relations duties. His assistant coaches are off-limits during the season. His players are even harder to reach.
Though Paterno finally relented in the days just before and after the 2004 season ended—granting me a lengthy interview and access to his radio show, and allowing me to accompany him to his normally off-limits Quarterbacks Club appearance—I was forced to spend the previous months shadowing him and his team from a safe distance. Wherever the old coach went—to games in Minneapolis, Boston, or Bloomington, to banquets in Pittsburgh, Valley Forge, or State College, to news conferences in Beaver Stadium’s posh media room or a storage shed beneath Indiana University’s Memorial Stadium—I was there, watching and listening.
As a result, many of the Paterno quotes in this book came from my being present at his weekly teleconferences, postgame press conferences, radio shows, and public appearances. Players were interviewed by phone or in chaotic postgame settings when a dozen or so were brought into a room and beset by scores of news-starved journalists. I often had to rely on my colleagues’ published accounts of their interviews with players I could not reach in the precious few moments we were allotted.
Curiously, while Paterno rarely grants one-on-one interviews with reporters who regularly cover Penn State football during the season, he is more willing to find a few minutes for those from national newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. Consequently, I scoured daily as many of those as I could find for fresh Paterno tidbits. The most helpful newspapers in providing daily insights into Paterno, the 2004 season, and the culture of Penn State football were the Centre Daily Times in State College and the student-run Daily Collegian. In addition, in this age of new technology that Paterno has yet to grasp or acknowledge, several Web sites offered a look at how Penn State fans reacted from week to week. They included BottleofBlog.com, GoPSUsports.com, PennLive.com, and PSUPlaybook.org. Also, thanks to Paul Dyzak and his colleagues at the Penn State University Archives, I was able to review the university’s massive collection of Joe Paterno–related material, including a newspaper clippings file that dates back to his arrival in State College in 1950.
Jeff Nelson, Penn State’s assistant athletic director for communications, was as helpful as he was able to be in assisting me with credentials, directing me to the right ex-player or administrator, and answering all sorts of inane questions.
Penn State president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley, retired vice president for finance Bob Patterson, and a host of ex-players, including Denny Onkotz, John Shaffer, John Capelletti, the late Bob Mitinger, and Lydell Mitchell were generous with their time.
Among the books on Paterno and Penn State that were extremely helpful and provided glimpses into games, seasons and players long gone were Ken Denlinger’s For the Glory (St. Martin’s Press, 1989); Joe Paterno: Football My Way by Joe Paterno, Mervin D. Hyman, and Gordon White (Macmillan Co. 1971); Joe Paterno: In Search of Excellence by James A. Paterson and Dennis Booher (Leisure Press, 1983); Joe Paterno: The Coach of Byzantium by George Paterno (Sports Publishing, 1997); Lion Country: Inside Penn State Football by Frank Bilovsky (Leisure Press, 1982); The Nittany Lions: A Story of Penn State Football by Ken Rappoport (The Strode Publishers, 1980); No Ordinary Joe: The Biography of Joe Paterno by Michael O’Brien (Rutledge Hill Press, 1998); Paterno: By the Book by Joe Paterno with Bernard Asbell (Random House, 1987); Penn State: An Illustrated History by Michael Bezilla (Penn State University Press, 1985); and Road to Number One: A Personal Chronicle of Penn State Football by Ridge Riley (Doubleday & Co., 1977).
I’m also eternally grateful to Gene Foreman, my old managing editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer who now teaches journalism at Penn State. Gene generously allowed me the use of his State College apartment for several days a week throughout the football season.
Lastly, I’d like to thank the boys and girls on the bus—the Penn State beat writers whose minds I picked, whose media guides I borrowed, whose patience I tested, and whose complaints about access I shared. They include Mark Brennan of Blue White Illustrated, Jerry Kellar of the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Rich Scarcella of the Reading Eagle, Ray Parrillo and Bill Lyon of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dave Jones and Bob Flounders of the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Neil Rudel of the Altoona Mirror, Heather Dinich of the Centre Daily Times, Jenny Vrentas and Wade Malcolm of the Daily Collegian, Neil Geoghegan of the Daily Local News, Chico Harlan of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
This book came about because of the energy and efforts of my agents, Venture Literary’s Frank Scatoni and Greg Dinkins, and the massive and incredibly helpful insights of Gotham Books editor Brendan Cahill.
And, of course, nothing would have been possible without the love and patience of my dear wife, Charlotte, who wouldn’t know a blitz from a blintz.
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The Lion in Autumn Page 35