By Seth Roberts
seth-roberts@uiowa.edu
I sat next to Joe Paterno once.
A seat opened up next to him at a table in the huge conference room that housed the Big Ten media days in Chicago this past summer. I jumped on it.
He leaned on the table, talking to a huddle of perhaps a dozen reporters. His reedy voice was soft enough that, even though I was only a few feet away from him, I had no idea what he said until I played back the file of the interview later that evening.
I didn’t ask Paterno anything, for a couple reasons.
The first is that I wasn’t yet familiar enough with the 2011 Nittany Lions to feel qualified to ask him about his team. Besides, everyone else was peppering him with questions about his age and I didn’t feel it was necessary to make him answer another.
The second was that I simply didn’t know how to open my mouth when seated next to a legend like Paterno. I guess you could say I was star-struck.
When I was asked to speak to a group of high-school journalism students several weeks later, I listed my five minutes next to Paterno as one of the highlights of my young career. It was a memory I thought I would treasure the rest of my life.
That was several months before the Penn State football program — and Paterno’s reputation — would come crumbling down.
Now, when I think back to that five minutes, I don’t know what to feel. It’s the same confusion that crept into my mind when I heard Paterno died on Sunday morning at age 85.
Part of me is sad one of the architects of modern football is gone. Few people have ever had an impact on a game like Paterno had on the gridiron; spending 61 years at a very successful institution tends to lend itself to legacy-making.
But at the same time, it’s impossible to reconcile that with the facts and accusations that have come out of State College in recent months.
In no way am I defending Paterno from those facts and accusations, mind you. It’s pretty clear to everyone that Jerry Sandusky is the scum of the earth — and a whole bunch of other words I’m not allowed to print.
And Paterno should have done more — no question about it. He had a certain responsibility as likely the single most important person in the state of Pennsylvania, and he failed.
But he was human. He made a mistake, albeit a terrible one. He had his flaws, just like everyone else in the world.
Granted, our mistakes probably won’t result in the destruction of the lives of innocent children. Paterno shouldn’t be forgiven.
But it’s hard for me to believe he was evil.
He pushed his players to be positive role models, and to excel just as much off the field as they routinely did on it. That’s why it’s the library — not the football stadium — on the Penn State campus that is named for him.
So let’s have a moment of silence for the best college football coach to ever live. The coach that fundamentally changed the way we see America’s game.
The coach that, like so many of us, had no idea what to do when confronted with the worst horrors anyone could imagine.
Remember JoePa.
