Accurately describing college football without mentioning Joe Paterno is like trying to visualize N.C . State’s campus without recognizing red brick–both have lasted seemingly forever, witnessed multiple generations, and refused to change their true personalities regardless of the era.
It is the last characteristic that constructed, defined and eventually stained Paterno’s unparalleled legacy.
By now, nearly all have heard the story: Paterno arrived to central Pennsylvania as an assistant coach in 1950 after playing defensive back at Brown. By the time he stopped coaching 61 years later, he had produced an unprecedented resume highlighted by being the winningest coach in college football history.
Over 360 of his players have been signed to NFL contracts, with 33 of them getting drafted in the first round. He averaged almost exactly nine wins per season and won nearly three-quarters of the games he coached. Paterno won 24 bowl games, just two wins shy of the amount of mere bowl appearances N.C . State has had in program history. He also coached more games than State’s past nine football coaches–Al Michaels, Lou Holtz , Bo Rein, Monte Kiffin , Tom Reed, Dick Sheridan, Mike O’Cain , Chuck Amato and Tom O’Brien–combined.
It was unprecedented and not realistically possible to witness again in the lifetime of students and faculty reading these words in 2012.
Only three active coaches in the FBS ranks have won over 200 games – Frank Beamer of Virginia Tech (251 wins), Mack Brown of Texas (227 wins), and Chris Ault of Nevada (226 wins). On each of their respective paces, it will take at least 19 more seasons to replace Paterno from the mountaintop.
If State coach Tom O’Brien wants to reach 410 victories, he would have to continue his yearly pace (7.2 wins per season) for another 42 seasons. At the ripe age of 105, Coach O’Brien would need to be carried off the field of Carter-Finley by his players on an accompanying stretcher.
Despite being the most decorated coach in college football history, Paterno will be largely remembered for life–both positive and negative–away from Beaver Stadium.
Paterno’s firm simplicity in how he lived his life and how he coached the Penn State Nittany Lions for all of 46 years was seen right from his inception as a head coach. It wasn’t just that his third Penn State team went undefeated–Paterno would lead four more undefeated seasons after 1969–but also that he implemented a virtually unheard of mission by emphasizing academics. By the end of his day, he donated more than $4 million to academic facilities, scholarship funding and faculty positions at PSU.
Paterno has also never had his program receive a major NCAA violation and helped graduate 78 percent of his players over the course of 46 years. In major college football, the average graduation rate has never exceeded 69 percent.
However, even with all of the statistics and countless stories of Paterno’s humble yet powerful influence on his community, it is one catastrophic mistake made nearly one decade ago, which constantly lingers in the mind of our entire country. The massive error came from, ironically, the exact same thing that made Paterno lovable and unmatched.
He had no idea he was more than a football coach.
Paterno lived like an octogenarian who refused to believe he was a sporting icon – he lived in the same small ranch house for the past 45 years with thick square glasses, his wife, and a persona shockingly similar to the old guy from “Up.” Nothing mattered more than his players, his family and his institution.
Much in the way basketball coaching legend Dean Smith failed to recognize the lucrative longevity of his career at UNC, Paterno lived with rolled-up pant legs and wanted Penn State’s board of trustees to commit modern day football suicide by raising entrance requirements for his student athletes.
Smith, once the winningest coach in college basketball history, was once asked for permission to have his life written into a biography. Smith shrugged.
“I don’t really think anyone would want to read that,” he said. “I’m just a basketball coach.”
And Paterno was just a football coach who put his soul into plain navy uniforms, sans tacky helmet stickers. If only he knew who he was and what had actually transpired in March of 2002, his legacy would have no question marks.
The only parting lecture Paterno ever gave was not an apology or an excuse for mistakes he had made in the past. Joe Paterno passed away on a silent Sunday morning in State College, Pa. this past weekend, and I’m pretty sure he left just like he lived – thinking about the people, place and game that he sacrificed everything for.
