It's clear now that Joe Pa did nothing to stop the child molestation that his defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, was guilty of.
All of these years I admired Joe Pa and his program. The were the epitome of how to do things 'the right way.' They were as squeaky clean as could be, right down to their vanilla uniforms and play calling.
But there's a lot I didn't realize. This article makes some excellent points. And it puts Joe Pa, and all that he supposedly did, in great perspective.
The reason Paterno was able to wield such influence is the outsized value placed on college sports and the coaches who deliver those winning programs. A "pyramid of power," Freeh described it. And anyone pointing to all the players he helped is just repeating the same pathetic concept.
Paterno did help his football players. Those men, however, were heavily recruited, talented and often highly motivated people. If they hadn't gone to Penn State they would've gone to Michigan or Virginia or Notre Dame.
For decades he found a way to take top-line kids and maximize what they could do, usually by motivating them to excel at a sport they already loved. They were subject to mass adulation and had the potential to become millionaires at the professional level.
He wasn't taking illiterate Third World children and getting them to Harvard. Almost every person Paterno positively impacted through football would have fared similarly had Penn State not even fielded a team. They just would have played elsewhere. Bo Schembechler or Lou Holtz or Bobby Bowden would've coached them up in football and life, just like Paterno did.
Conversely, the kids that Jerry Sandusky tricked, molested and damaged wouldn't have lived the same life had Paterno done the right thing. They were attacked, out of nowhere. Without fault. Without provocation. Without the opportunity to create their own destiny.
The lives of these kids were profoundly and forever destroyed because of the actions of Sandusky, Spanier, Schultz, Curley and, yes, Joe Paterno.
There could never be enough victories, enough perfect graduation rates, enough national championships to justify that.
Joe Paterno was a great influence on men who were already likely to live great lives, men who could help him win football games.
He was a failure to those Second Mile boys who had no such talents, no such opportunity, no parade of recruiters looking to offer them scholarships. He turned his back on the very kids that were desperate for the kind of hero that Joe Paterno's former legacy claimed he was all about.
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