R.I.P. (Rest in Paterno)

What bothers me the most about all that's been said about Joe Paterno and Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky indictment is not the criticism of Paterno's handling of the matter or the reaction of people around the university to Paterno's firing. Paterno himself has admitted, particularly in the interviews shortly before his death, that he should have done more and it’s obvious that the reactions of some students and other Penn State supporters didn’t show the proper perspective on the real gravity of the situation and the victims. 

 What I find reprehensible, though, is the combination of gutlessness and ignorance that so many commentators have displayed. This is embodied by both the hack writers who only crawled out of the ground to sharpen their hatchets after Paterno was fired and the media blowhards who've gone out of their way to portray Joe Paterno and State College as the second coming of Jim Jones and Jonestown. I expect some of the same culprits to criticize Paterno’s family for suggesting that those wishing to honor his memory make donations to the Pennsylvania Special Olympics and THON (i.e. the world's largest student-run philanthropy) rather than RAINN or other worthy organizations involved in preventing abuse. 

Joe Paterno was a man who tried to do good for as many people as possible. Like any man, he didn’t always succeed, but any rational assessment shows that he succeeded more than he failed. That bit of context is conspicuously absent from the work of writers who lacked the courage to voice their criticisms about things like how he treated NFL scouts until after he was fired. As for my hometown of State College, we all knew that the success of the football team brought our big small-town a lot more national attention than it would have gotten as just a good Midwestern-style university that happened to be in the middle of Pennsylvania.

That did not, however, mean that football was the only thing that mattered there. No one was patrolling the streets of State College or sweeping through the Nittany Mall on Saturday afternoons to ask people why they weren’t at the game. We lived our lives normally, enjoying the accomplishments of the team the same way fans in Pittsburgh and Dallas did for the Steelers and the Cowboys not because someone made us “drink the Kool-Aid” but because that’s what fans do when they’re proud. A lot of that stemmed from Paterno and the honest work he put into making the team and the university better. That’s what I’ll remember about the one sports figure I ever admired, not because someone made me “drink the Kool-Aid” but because that’s what fans do when they’re proud.