Paterno

by Joe Posnanski

  Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators.

  I understand that people are upset and angry, but let’s be fair and let the legal process unfold. In the meantime, I would ask all Penn Staters to continue to trust in what that name represents, continue to pursue their lives every day with high ideals and not let these events shake their beliefs nor who they are.

  Sue and I have devoted our lives to helping young people reach their potential. The fact that someone we thought we knew might have harmed young people to this extent is deeply troubling. If this is true, we were all fooled along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families. They are in our prayers.

  D’Elia had hoped people would pay special attention to the sentence “If this is true, we were all fooled along with scores of professionals.” Sandusky had worked closely with child care professionals for most of his life. They had approved him for numerous adoptions and approved him many, many times to be a foster parent. “They were fooled, and that’s their business,” said Paterno. “What chance did I have?”

  But D’Elia’s fears were confirmed: it was too late. Sunday was the day that television cameras began to surround the Paterno home on McKee Street.

  ON MONDAY, THE FAMILY TRIED to convince Paterno to read the presentment. He objected that he already knew what was in there, but they told him there was no room left for illusion. Guido D’Elia would remember telling him, “You realize that the people out there think you knew about this? They think you had to know because you know about everything.”

  “That’s their opinion!” Paterno shouted. “I’m not omniscient!”

  “They think you are!” D’Elia roared back.

  Later, D’Elia described watching Paterno read the presentment: “It was like watching his innocence get blown away. What did he know about perverted things like that? When he asked Scott, ‘What is sodomy, anyway?’ I thought my heart was going to break.”

  The attorney general of Pennsylvania, Linda Kelly, had been in office for only a few months. Her predecessor, Tom Corbett, had initiated the grand jury investigation of Sandusky more than two years earlier. He was now governor and would play a substantial role in what was to follow. On Monday, though, Kelly held a press conference to discuss the Sandusky indictment. When Paterno’s name came up, she was clear about his meeting his legal responsibility: “Mr. Paterno has been interviewed by investigators. You can see that he has testified in the grand jury that he reported this to individuals in the administration—being Mr. Curley and Mr. Schultz—as far as what occurred that night. He’s been cooperative with the investigators in this case. He’s not regarded as a target at this point.”

  However, the question had shifted: it was no longer about Paterno’s meeting his legal responsibility; it was, as one Paterno family member bitterly called it, “the Joe Paterno morality clause.” Had Paterno done enough beyond the law? Had he used what so many people saw as his immense power to stop Jerry Sandusky? Linda Kelly basically talked around the question: “I would have to say that all of us standing up here are law enforcement officials, and that we deal with evidence . . . . Those of us that have been in the law for a while know that there is a difference between moral and legal guilt. Right now, those of us up here right now are concerned with legal guilt.”

  This wasn’t entirely true. One of the people on the podium with Kelly was Police Commissioner Frank Noonan. After the press conference ended, Noonan made his way out to the reporters. He had something to say: “Somebody has to question about what I would consider the moral requirements for a human being that knows of sexual things that are taking place with a child . . . . I think you have the moral responsibility, anyone. Not whether you’re a football coach or a university president or the guy sweeping the building. I think you have a moral responsibility to call us.”

  The story was charging toward Paterno at warp speed. Even if Noonan had not said anything at all, the question of whether Joe Paterno lived up to his moral responsibility would have been asked again and again, in offices and bars and churches across America. It would have been argued ceaselessly because he was Joe Paterno, the all-time winning coach, architect of The Grand Experiment, and he had been celebrated for almost a half century as a man of integrity. “Paterno was always the lead—what did he know and when did he know it,” USA Today columnist Christine Brennan said at a media panel in late November on the Penn State campus. Mark Viera of the New York Times agreed. “We understood that the story was Paterno,” he said later.

  So, yes, the shift toward Paterno was inevitable. However, Noon-an’s statement did give a certain authority to the questioners. “Official Says Paterno Failed Moral Test” was a typical headline. And it would cast a shadow on everything Paterno said. When he said the 1998 incident had nothing to do with Sandusky’s retirement in 1999, many didn’t believe him. When he said McQueary was vague about what he said in 2001, many didn’t believe him, even after McQueary concurred under oath. When he said he did not know about Sandusky’s alleged crimes and that if he had understood he certainly would have done more to stop him, many did not believe that either.

  On Monday, Paterno coached practice while the media swarmed his home. He had a regularly scheduled Tuesday press conference, and when he got home he prepared what he would say. He intended to use that press conference to explain what he did and when he did it.

  On Monday night, Penn State sent out a press release to the media stating that Paterno would answer questions only about football. Paterno said they never talked about it with him.

  Scott Paterno told his mother, “I think you need to brace yourself. They could fire Dad.”

  “Scotty, that will kill him,” she replied.

  JOURNALISTS BEGAN TO LINE UP outside the football stadium three hours before the press conference on Tuesday morning. It was a beautiful November day. On one side of the stadium, students rested and studied in the tent village they called “Paternoville,” waiting for front-row seats to one of the biggest games of the year. The Nebraska game was huge, but that was just football. Around the corner from Paternoville, journalists were camping out for front-row seats to the biggest press conference the school had ever had.

  Back at the house on McKee Street, the family prepped Paterno for the press conference. It was not going well. He had never developed the talent for being concise. He had never needed to. His whole life he had rambled. This was a charming quality when people were asking him about, say, Al Davis, and he started to talk about all the people who had grown up in Brooklyn. In this case, though, his ramblings made him sound unsure. Even in the short time he had spent before the grand jury, he had rambled. Here is his answer when asked if “fondling” was the right term to describe what McQueary had told him:

  Well, I don’t know what you would call it. Obviously, he was doing something with the youngster. It was a sexual nature. I’m not sure exactly what it was. I didn’t push Mike to describe exactly what it was because he was very upset. Obviously, I was in a little bit of a dilemma since Mr. Sandusky was not working for me anymore. So I told—I didn’t go any further than that except I knew Mike was upset and I knew some kind of inappropriate action was being taken by Jerry Sandusky with the youngster.

  One simple question led to all sorts of twists and turns of thought; there was a hint in there about his feelings toward Sandusky as a former employee, a bit about how McQueary hadn’t really gone into any detail, a suggestion that Paterno didn’t really know what had happened. Each of these could lead to a dozen other questions. And each of those questions, given the way Paterno rambled, could lead to dozens more. Family and friends play-acted as reporters and fired questions at him: Did you know about 1998? What did McQueary tell you? Why didn’t you go to the police? Why didn’t you follow up? Paterno answered, got upset, answ
ered again, rambled a bit more.

  There was talk of having Paterno just read a statement, and one was crafted. It was never read.

  The reporters who knew Paterno best understood that this press conference was going to be a fiasco of the highest order. With his hearing problems, his age, his crankiness, and his susceptibility to talking around his answers, along with the blood-in-the-water media frenzy that was building, they knew this press conference would make things much worse for him. “It will be a living funeral,” one reporter predicted, echoing words Paterno had used through the years.

  About an hour before the scheduled time, a representative of the university called Guido D’Elia and said the press conference had been canceled by order of the president. Later, a rumor surfaced that the university was going to have its own press conference.

  “That’s it,” D’Elia told Paterno family members. “They’re going to take Joe out.”

  STANDING IN FRONT OF BEAVER Stadium, Penn State’s sports information director, Jeff Nelson, made the brief announcement that the press conference had been canceled. He refused to take questions. But there were hundreds and hundreds of journalists who had stories to write, reports to file, hours to fill. For a time, the reporters stayed out in front of the stadium and interviewed each other. Some walked over to Paternoville to get some thoughts from the students. Many went to McKee Street to stand in front of Joe Paterno’s house.

  McKee is a quiet, tree-lined street just off campus. The Paternos’ house is the last house on the left; it backs up into Sunset Park. For the next few days, the parking lot of Sunset Park was crowded with satellite trucks. Media people stood across the street, on a neighbor’s lawn, and pointed their cameras and their notepads at the front door of Joe Paterno’s house. It looked more like a movie set than reality. Mary Kay remembered being nervous pulling the car into the garage for fear that she might clip the side and gain a national reputation as a bad driver. Other family members remembered looking out the window and seeing their neighbor raking autumn leaves in between the legs of camera tripods.

  With the press conference canceled, the crowd around the house grew exponentially, and there was a new aggressiveness in the air. At one point, Scott accompanied Joe to the car to drive to practice. After Joe left, Scott was blasted with questions and, in the madness, tried to respond as best he could. It was another turning point. The scene had become unmanageable. The Paternos had always handled things in a small-town way. They entertained recruits and boosters at their home, with Sue making the food, Mary Kay and Diana washing the dishes, Scott and David eating the leftovers. They were never comfortable with the millions of dollars they made and gave much of it back to the school. They had lived their lives as though in a Norman Rockwell painting. But now Guido and Jay and Mary Kay looked outside, saw Scott drowning, and they knew: This wasn’t a small-town issue anymore. The big city had roared in. They needed an expert. “It was time for a Hail Mary,” Guido said. Scott agreed.

  That night they called consultant Dan McGinn, whose job, in his own words, is “to help our clients solve their most complex problems.” He had worked with Coca-Cola, Texaco, the London Stock Exchange, and General Motors. “I know why you’re calling,” were the first words out of McGinn’s mouth.

  JOE PATERNO WANTED TO TALK. He wanted to rush out into the crowd of reporters and have an impromptu question-and-answer session. He wanted to hold a press conference on his back patio. He did not like being silenced, and he was beginning to feel that he was being scapegoated. He was beginning to feel that some of the people who had wanted him fired years earlier now saw their chance. The story had gotten away from them. Now people were writing and saying that he didn’t do anything when he was told that a child had been raped. People were writing and saying that it was ridiculous to call Tim Curley Paterno’s boss. “He was the king of the whole state; he had no boss,” one reporter said on television. People were writing and saying that Paterno certainly knew—he had to know—about Sandusky’s crimes and that he had covered them up to protect his own legacy and his good friend Sandusky instead of protecting children.

  When Dan McGinn arrived at the Paterno home, the Paterno family and friends were almost physically holding Joe back from giving a press conference right then and there. McGinn made a couple of quick assessments: First, Paterno was in no shape to speak to the media; with the atmosphere this toxic, anything he said would make their situation much worse. Second, Paterno was going to have to retire; the damage had been too great.

  This is when McGinn learned just how far Paterno’s influence and reputation had fallen. He asked D’Elia for the name of one person on the Penn State Board of Trustees, just one, whom they could reach out to, to negotiate a gracious ending. D’Elia shook his head.

  “One person on the board, that’s all we need,” McGinn said.

  D’Elia shook his head again. “It began in 2004,” he whispered, referring to Paterno’s clash with Spanier. “The board started to turn. We don’t have anybody on the board now.”

  That’s when McGinn realized that this was going to be the worst day of Joe Paterno’s professional life. The family released the statement in which Paterno attempted to retire at the end of the season, but within an hour the news stories were reporting that the board might not give him the chance.

  For the last time, Joe Paterno went to the Penn State football offices to coach his team in practice. He cried, the coaches cried, many of the players cried. Jay brought his son, Joey, to practice, something he almost never did. Joey idolized his grandfather. “I wanted him to always have that memory,” Jay explained. At one point, Jay was standing in a place where he could see a silhouette of his father against Mount Nittany, and in the distance also see his son, and he felt a stinging in his eyes, a mix of pain and pride and a futile wish for time to stop.

  Jay still believed that his father would be allowed to finish the season. He thought his father had earned that—at least that. Jay was playing tennis that night when his cell phone rang. His wife told him to call home. Joe Paterno had been fired.

  FRAN GANTER, WHO HAD PLAYED for Paterno at Penn State and coached with him for more than thirty years, showed up at the Paterno house just before 10 P.M. Wednesday night with an envelope. Later Ganter would tell friends he did not know what was inside.

  Paterno opened the envelope; inside was a sheet of Penn State stationary with just a name, John Surma, and a phone number. Surma was the CEO of U.S. Steel and the vice chairman of the Penn State Board of Trustees. Paterno picked up the phone and called the number.

  “This is Joe Paterno.”

  “This is John Surma. The board of trustees have terminated you effective immediately.”

  Paterno hung up the phone before he could hear anything else.

  A minute later, Sue called the number. “After sixty-one years,” she said, her voice cracking, “he deserved better.” And then she hung up.

  There have been accounts—and certainly will be others—of what happened inside that board of trustees meeting. Graham Spanier was forced out. There was a suggestion that Paterno’s statement, particularly where he directed that “the Board of Trustees should not spend a single moment discussing my status,” was seen as insubordination. There were reports that, when there seemed to be some hesitation or loss of will, Governor Tom Corbett reminded the board, “Remember the children.” Board members spent the next few months justifying their reasons and recasting the firing as something less contentious. As ESPN’s Don Van Natta reported, “He was simply relieved of his coaching duties but was allowed to continue on as an emeritus professor and would be paid his full salary under his contract, the trustees said.”

  Joe Paterno was fired. Why and how the board made its decision is not my story to tell.

  The campus was overrun with emotion. A riot broke out, several students were videotaped overturning a television truck, more than thirty-five people were arrested, and there was at least $200,000 worth of damage. Penn State student
s would be mocked for, as one news site put it, “rioting for a child-molester enabler.” Students gathered in front of Paterno’s house, and Joe and Sue came out for a few moments, he in a gray sweatshirt, she in a red bathrobe. His short speech to the students was quintessential Paterno, filled with raw emotion and winding roads:

  I want to say hello to all these great students who I love. You guys are great, all of you—when I say “guys,” you know what I mean, you know I mean girls too. Hey, look, get a good night’s sleep, all right? Study, all right? We’ve still got things to do. I’m out of it, maybe now. That phone call put me out of it. We’ll go from here, okay? Good luck, everybody. Thanks. Thank you! And one thing: Thanks. And pray a little for those victims. We are Penn State.

  Elsewhere on campus, a group of students standing around the statue of Paterno cried silently.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked one young woman.

  “Because everybody lost,” she said.

  AT 6 A.M. THURSDAY MORNING, Jay Paterno went to his father’s house. He had not slept, and his eyes were red and swollen. The night before, he went through various phases of anger and outrage and disbelief. He told his son that his grandfather had been fired. Joey had a question: “When this is over, will we still be Penn State fans?”

  “I don’t know,” Jay answered, and that is when he started crying, and he did not stop until he pulled himself together and went to his father’s house. He could not get over the unfairness of it all. If Sandusky was guilty, everybody was fooled. The way he saw it, his father had followed university policy; he had done what he thought was right; he had heard about an incident and reported it. How could they fire him for this? How could they believe he knew about evils that nobody else seemed to know about?