Michael OBrien - No Ordinary Joe: The Biography of Joe Paterno

To some people Joe Paterno seems complexa grand collection of contradictions, said one observer. Sportswriter Bill Lyon noted that Paterno has been called, at one time or another, a modern Renaissance man, a latter-day Don Quixote, an educator, a motivator, a do-gooder, an intimidator, a hypocrite, a pious fraud, a tiresome dispenser of righteousness, a genius, and a choker. Another sportswriter, Ron Bracken of the Centre Daily Times, Paternos hometown newspaper, described a different mix of traits. Paterno can be cranky, tyrannical, dictatorial, blunt, scathing, charming, beguiling, entertaining, and witty, all in the span of thirty minutes.

No one disputes, though, that since 1966, when he became head football coach at Penn State University, Joe Paterno has been one of the nations most successful college coaches. Through the 1997 season Joe had compiled a record of 298-77-3 in thirty-two seasons. (He came to Penn State in 1950 as an assistant coach and has never coached anywhere else.) He has guided his teams to two national championships, four national championship games, and seven undefeated regular seasons. The recipient of numerous honors, Paterno was selected by Sports Illustrated as its 1986 Sportsman of the Year, and his peers in the American Football Coaches Association four times have named him Coach of the Year.

Joes folk hero reputation in Pennsylvania has spawned an entire line of Paterno products, including coffee mugs (Cup of Joe), life-size cardboard cutouts (Standup Joe), and golf balls with his familiar face (like the Penn State offense, three out of four guaranteed to go up the middle). He also has been the only college football coach ever to second the nomination of a president of the United States.

The acclaim for Joe Paterno has stemmed largely from the contrast between the high academic and moral standards he has tried to exemplify and the shameless conduct that often embarrasses and dishonors the college sport he cherishes. Intense pressure burdens coaches and athletic administrators at major schools. Because college football competes for the entertainment dollar, it has to put on a good performance. A good performance means not only defeating traditional rivals but also emerging with a winning record and a high ranking in the national wire-service polls. Only those teams at the top of the polls filled stadiums, received bowl invitations, appeared regularly on network television, and generated adequate revenues to finance their expensive athletic programs, observed sports historian Benjamin Rader.

Given the high stakes involved in fielding winning teams, temptations to cheat are difficult to resist. Head coaches are especially vulnerable. Since recruiting blue-chip athletes is crucial to success, illegal inducements are sometimes offered. Alumni and booster groups, often with the tacit approval of the coaches, give athletes cash, fancy cars, new clothes, rent-free apartments, and high-paying summer jobs.

To obtain the admission of an outstanding athlete with a poor high school or junior college academic record, coaches sometimes tamper with transcripts and make up deficiencies in hours of college credits or grades by arranging for easy correspondence or extension division courses.

The fundamental illogic of sending functional illiterates into college classrooms has not yet dawned on educators and administrators, sportswriter John Underwood complained in 1979. They would rather be liberal than right. They have consistently made it easy for the coach to bring in nonstudents as students as long as they can negotiate one hundred yards in 9.5 seconds.

Under Joes long leadership, however, Penn States football program has never been accused of significant wrongdoing by any official investigative body. It has never been on probation and never been cited by the NCAA for major violation of its rules. Moreover, shortly after becoming head coach, Joe proclaimed his Grand Experiment, an effort to prove that academic standards and excellent football could coexist at the university. He often harped on the theme. Defensive lineman Steve Smear, whose father had died when Steve was a child, was the first member of his family to attend college. Early in his career at Penn State in the 1960s, he skipped many classes and did poorly in his courses, sparking Joes concern. If you fell down academically, said Smear, you had to go [into Joes office], sit down, and look him in the face. Joe told Smear: I promised your mother that you would get an education. Dont disappoint her. Dont disappoint me. Straighten it out or youll never play here. Smear straightened out his career, served as co-captain of the team his junior and senior years, and dramatically improved his grade-point average.