Joe Paterno is Penn State. He can do what he wants, when he wants in Happy Valley, a privilege borne of 62 seasons in State College, 46 as the head coach, 409 victories and two national championships, among other things.
Which is why the Hall of Famer will not step down as a result of the emerging sex scandal involving former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, even if it’s clear that he should.
For years, JoePa has defiantly resisted calls by fans, alumni and pundits alike to resign his post, as his doubters have suggested that the living legend, now approaching his 85th birthday, is too old and too fragile to go on coaching, that the game has passed him by.
At least, that was the case back in the early 2000s, when his Nittany Lions posted losing records four times between 2000 and 2004. Paterno’s teams have had winning seasons ever since and are likely to reach double-digit wins in 2011 for the fourth time since 2005.
Realistically, then, there’s no way that anyone can reasonably force Paterno from his post for football-related reasons. His teams continue to win, bringing plenty of notoriety and money back to Penn State as a result.
Unfortunately, it’s that very intoxicant of success, along with Paterno’s own infallibility in Happy Valley, that will keep him from stepping down and others from forcing him to. The university is bound to do anything and everything within its power to keep JoePa’s name as clean as possible amidst what may well be the dirtiest scandal to hit college football in decades.
In fact, it’s in Penn State’s best interest to make sure Paterno’s reputation isn’t sullied. After all, he is the very embodiment of Penn State, the man who is single-handedly responsible for putting the university on the map. As such, any harm visited upon him will be visited upon the university many times more.
Ironically enough, it is in this time of crisis that Penn State needs Joe Paterno the most. He has long been held up as a shining example of integrity, loyalty and good judgment in an era of college football that is so often devoid of all three.
In that way, then, Penn State has itself remained a beacon of those values, standing tall while the other big brands in the sport (Ohio State, Miami, USC) soil themselves with seedy activities and the NCAA infractions they incur.
Much of that luster has already been lost, at least in the court of public opinion, where the full entrance of facts and a fair trial are not necessary to forming a long-lasting opinion.
What remains of it, though, is in the person of Paterno, a squirrelly, old Italian man from Brooklyn who supposedly saw no evil, heard only a smidgen of evil and, most importantly, spoke no evil to anyone other than athletic director Tim Curley.
That being the case, the university and perhaps even the state will get in on an act at which Paterno is already well-practiced—shutting out and dismissing public outrage while keeping JoePa on the sidelines.
Many questions remain amidst this whole ordeal—How much did Paterno know? How could he not have known, given his longstanding relationship with Sandusky? Why didn’t he report it to the police?—all of which will take weeks, if not months, to untangle fully. We may not know for a while what Paterno’s culpability in this fiasco, moral if not legal, truly is.
In the meantime, the Nittany Lions, at 8-1, will continue to contend for the Big Ten Championship, providing Paterno, his coaches and his players safe sanctuary from the media frenzy that is already building around central Pennsylvania.
Just the sort of sanctuary that Paterno hopes to keep for himself and that Penn State would like nothing more than to create for him.
