Most Viewed Stories
Joe Paterno Capsules: Family, football meant everything to former coach
Full text of statement by the Paterno family on the death of Joe Paterno:
It is with great sadness that we announce that Joe Paterno passed away earlier today. His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled.
He died as he lived. He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been. His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community.
He has been many things in his life — a soldier, scholar, mentor, coach, friend and father. To my mother he was and is her soul mate, and the last several weeks have shown the strength of their love. To his children and grandchildren he is a shining example of how to live a good, decent and honest life, a standard to which we aspire.
When he decided to forego a career in law and make coaching his vocation, his father Angelo had but one command: Make an impact.
As the last 61 years have shown, Joe made an incredible impact. That impact has been felt and appreciated by our family in the form of thousands of letters and well wishes along with countless acts of kindness from people whose lives he touched. It is evident also in the thousands of successful student athletes who have gone on to multiply that impact as they spread out across the country.
And so he leaves us with a peaceful mind, comforted by his "living legacy" of five kids, 17 grandchildren, and hundreds of young men whose lives he changed in more ways than can begin to be counted.
In lieu of flowers or gifts, the family requests that donations be made to the Special Olympics of Pennsylvania or the Penn State-THON, The Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Other than family, football was everything to Joe Paterno. It was his lifeblood. It kept him pumped. Life could not be the same without it.
"Right now, I'm not the coach. And I've got to get used to that," Paterno said after the Penn State Board of Trustees fired him at the height of a child sex abuse scandal.
Before he could, he ran out of time.
Paterno, a sainted figure at Penn State for almost half a century but scarred forever by the scandal involving his one-time heir apparent, died Sunday at age 85.
His death came just 65 days after his son Scott said his father had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Mount Nittany Medical Center said he died at 9:25 a.m. of "metastatic small cell carcinoma of the lung," an aggressive cancer that has spread from one part of the body to an unrelated area.
Friends and former colleagues believe there were other factors — the kind that wouldn't appear on a death certificate.
"You can die of heartbreak. I'm sure Joe had some heartbreak, too," said 82-year-old Bobby Bowden, the former Florida State coach who retired two years ago after 34 seasons in Tallahassee.
Longtime Nebraska coach Tom Osborne said he suspected "the emotional turmoil of the last few weeks might have played into it."
And Mickey Shuler, who played tight end for Paterno from 1975 to 1977, held his alma mater accountable.
"I don't think that the Penn State that he helped us to become and all the principles and values and things that he taught were carried out in the handling of his situation," he said.
Paterno's death just under three months following his last victory called to mind another coaching great, Alabama's Paul "Bear" Bryant, who died less than a month after retiring.
"Quit coaching?" Bryant said late in his career. "I'd croak in a week."
Paterno alluded to the remark made by his friend and rival, saying in 2003: "There isn't anything in my life anymore except my family and my football. I think about it all the time."
The winningest coach in major college football, Paterno roamed the Penn State sidelines for 46 seasons, his thick-rimmed glasses, windbreaker and jet-black sneakers as familiar as the Nittany Lions' blue and white uniforms.
His devotion to what he called "Success with Honor" made Paterno's fall all the more startling.
Happy Valley seemed perfect for him, a place where "JoePa" knew best, where he not only won more football games than any other major college coach, but won them the right way. With Paterno, character came first, championships second, academics before athletics. He insisted that on-field success not come at the expense of graduation rates.
But in the middle of his final season, the legend was shattered. Paterno was engulfed in a child sex abuse scandal when a former trusted assistant, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of molesting 10 boys over a 15-year span, sometimes in the football building.
Outrage built quickly after the state's top law enforcement official said the coach hadn't fulfilled a moral obligation to go to authorities when a graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, reported seeing Sandusky with a young boy in the showers of the football complex in 2002.
McQueary said that he had seen Sandusky attacking the child with his hands around the boy's waist but said he wasn't 100 percent sure it was intercourse. McQueary described Paterno as shocked and saddened and said the coach told him he had "done the right thing" by reporting the encounter.
Paterno waited a day before alerting school officials and never went to the police.
"I didn't know which way to go ... and rather than get in there and make a mistake," Paterno told The Washington Post in an interview nine days before his death.
"You know, (McQueary) didn't want to get specific," Paterno said. "And to be frank with you I don't know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it."
When the scandal broke in November, Paterno said he would retire following the 2011 season. He also said he was "absolutely devastated" by the abuse case.
"This is a tragedy," he said. "It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more."
But the university trustees fired Paterno, effective immediately. Graham Spanier, one of the longest-serving university presidents in the nation, also was fired.
Paterno was notified by phone, not in person, a decision that board vice chairman John Surma regretted, trustees said. Lanny Davis, the attorney retained by trustees as an adviser, said Surma intended to extend his regrets over the phone before Paterno hung up him.
After weeks of escalating criticism by some former players and alumni about a lack of transparency, trustees last week said they fired Paterno in part because he failed a moral obligation to do more in reporting the 2002 allegation.
An attorney for Paterno on Thursday called the board's comments self-serving and unsupported by the facts. Paterno fully reported what he knew to the people responsible for campus investigations, lawyer Wick Sollers said.
"He did what he thought was right with the information he had at the time," Sollers said.
The lung cancer was found during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. A few weeks later, Paterno broke his pelvis after a fall but did not need surgery.
The hospital said Paterno was surrounded by family members, who have requested privacy.
Paterno had been in the hospital since Jan. 13 for observation after what his family called minor complications from his cancer treatments. Washington Post writer Sally Jenkins, who conducted the final interview, described Paterno then as frail, speaking mostly in a whisper and wearing a wig. The second half of the two-day interview was done at his bedside.
On Sunday, two police officers were stationed to block traffic on the street where Paterno's modest ranch home stands next to a local park. The officers said the family had asked there be no public gathering outside the house, still decorated with a Christmas wreath, so Paterno's relatives could grieve privately. And, indeed, the street was quiet on a cold winter day.
Paterno's sons, Scott and Jay, arrived separately at the house late Sunday morning. Jay Paterno, who was his father's quarterbacks coach, was crying.
"His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled," the family said in a statement. "He died as he lived. He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been. His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community."
Paterno built a program based on the credo of "Success with Honor," and he found both. He won 409 games and took the Nittany Lions to 37 bowl games and two national championships. More than 250 of the players he coached went on to the NFL.
"He will go down as the greatest football coach in the history of the game," Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said after his former team, the Florida Gators, beat Penn State 37-24 in the 2011 Outback Bowl.
The university handed the football team to one of Paterno's assistants, Tom Bradley, who said Paterno "will go down in history as one of the greatest men, who maybe most of you know as a great football coach."
"As the last 61 years have shown, Joe made an incredible impact," said the statement from the family. "That impact has been felt and appreciated by our family in the form of thousands of letters and well wishes along with countless acts of kindness from people whose lives he touched. It is evident also in the thousands of successful student athletes who have gone on to multiply that impact as they spread out across the country."
New Penn State football coach Bill O'Brien, hired earlier this month, offered his condolences.
"There are no words to express my respect for him as a man and as a coach," O'Brien said in a statement. "To be following in his footsteps at Penn State is an honor."
Paterno believed success was not measured entirely on the field. From his idealistic early days, he had implemented what he called a "grand experiment" — to graduate more players while maintaining success on the field.
The team consistently ranked among the best in the Big Ten for graduating players. As of 2011, it had 49 academic All-Americans, the third-highest among schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision. All but two played under Paterno.
"He teaches us about really just growing up and being a man," former linebacker Paul Posluszny, now with the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars, once said. "Besides the football, he's preparing us to be good men in life."
Sandusky, who has maintained his innocence, lauded his former boss in a statement that said: "He maintained a high standard in a very difficult profession. Joe preached toughness, hard work and clean competition. Most importantly, he had the courage to practice what he preached."
Paterno certainly had detractors. One former Penn State professor called his high-minded words on academics a farce, and a former administrator said players often got special treatment. His coaching style often was considered too conservative. Some thought he held on to his job too long, and a move to push him out in 2004 failed.
But the critics were in the minority, and his program was never cited for major NCAA violations. The child sex abuse scandal, however, did prompt separate inquiries by the U.S. Department of Education and the NCAA into the school's handling.
Paterno didn't intend to become a coach. He played quarterback and defensive back for Brown University and set a school record with 14 career interceptions, but when he graduated in 1950 he planned to go to law school. He said his father hoped he would someday be president.
But when Paterno was 23, a former coach at Brown was moving to Penn State to become the head coach and persuaded Paterno to come with him as an assistant.
"I had no intention to coach when I got out of Brown," Paterno said in 2007 in an interview at Penn State's Beaver Stadium before being inducted into college football's Hall of Fame. "Come to this hick town? From Brooklyn?"
In 1963, he was offered a job by the late Al Davis — $18,000, triple his salary at Penn State, plus a car to become general manager and coach of the AFL's Oakland Raiders. He said no. Rip Engle retired as Penn State head coach three years later, and Paterno took over.
At the time, Penn State was considered "Eastern football" — inferior — and Paterno courted newspaper coverage to raise the team's profile. In 1967, PSU began a 30-0-1 streak.
But Penn State couldn't get to the top of the polls. The Nittany Lions finished second in 1968 and 1969 despite perfect seasons. They were undefeated and untied again in 1973 at 12-0 again but finished fifth. Texas edged them in 1969 after President Richard Nixon, impressed with the Longhorns' bowl performance, declared them No. 1.
"I'd like to know," Paterno said later, "how could the president know so little about Watergate in 1973, and so much about college football in 1969?"
A national title finally came in 1982, after a 27-23 win over Georgia at the Sugar Bowl. Another followed in 1986 after the Lions intercepted Vinny Testaverde five times and beat Miami 14-10 in the Fiesta Bowl.
They made several title runs after that, including a 2005 run to the Orange Bowl and an 11-1 season in 2008 that ended in a 37-23 loss to Southern California in the Rose Bowl.
In his later years, physical ailments wore the old coach down.
Paterno was run over on the sideline during a game at Wisconsin in November 2006 and underwent knee surgery. He hurt his hip in 2008 demonstrating an onside kick. An intestinal illness and a bad reaction to antibiotics prescribed for dental work slowed him for most of the 2010 season. He began scaling back his speaking engagements that year, ending his summer caravan of speeches to alumni across the state.
Then a receiver bowled over Paterno at practice in August, sending him to the hospital with shoulder and pelvis injuries and consigning him to coach much of what would be his last season from the press box.
"The fact that we've won a lot of games is that the good Lord kept me healthy, not because I'm better than anybody else," Paterno said two days before he won his 409th game and passed Eddie Robinson of Grambling State for the most in Division I. "It's because I've been around a lot longer than anybody else."
Paterno could be conservative on the field, especially in big games, relying on the tried-and-true formula of defense, the running game and field position.
He and his wife, Sue, raised five children in State College. Anybody could telephone him at his home — the same one he appeared in front of on the night he was fired — by looking up "Paterno, Joseph V." in the phone book.
He walked to home games and was greeted and wished good luck by fans on the street. Former players paraded through his living room for the chance to say hello. But for the most part, he stayed out of the spotlight.
Paterno did have a knack for jokes. He referred to Twitter, the social media site, as "Twittle-do, Twittle-dee."
He also could be abrasive and stubborn, and he had his share of run-ins with his bosses or administrators. And as his legend grew, so did the attention to his on-field decisions, and the questions about when he would hang it up.
Calls for his retirement reached a crescendo in 2004. The next year, Penn State went 11-1 and won the Big Ten. In the Orange Bowl, PSU beat Florida State, coached by Bowden, who was eased out after the 2009 season after 34 years and 389 wins.
Like many others, he was outlasted by "JoePa."
Commentary: 'After 61 years, he deserved better.'
Joe Paterno had barely hung up the phone when his wife of 50 years picked it up and redialed the number scrawled on the slip of paper.
"After 61 years," Sue Paterno said to the man who had just fired her husband, "he deserved better."
On the other end was John Surma, vice chairman for a Penn State Board of Trustees that couldn't muster enough courage or decency to fire Paterno in person. Board members were desperate to stanch the tidal wave of bad news that followed the indictment of Paterno's longtime former assistant, Jerry Sandusky, on multiple counts of child sex abuse just a few days earlier.
So an assistant athletic director knocked the front door of Paternos' home that cold November night and wordlessly handed over the note with Surma's name and a phone number on it. In that mercilessly brief call, Paterno was told that after nearly a half century as coach of the Nittany Lions, he was being fired "effective immediately."
Like that conversation, the one that began with Sue Paterno's call back didn't last long.
"He deserved better," she repeated, and then hung up.
Yes, he did. And there may be no more fitting postscript for the life and career of a football coach, husband and father who became not just the face, but the unyielding, cantankerous soul of a school that over the course of his tenure was transformed from a "cow college" into a top-shelf public research university. Now all those people who rushed to judgment about Paterno's role in the Sandusky case will have to find their way out from under the sordid scandal without the longtime coach.
Paterno, 85, died Sunday of lung cancer. Those who knew him well believe it was something more akin to a broken heart.
"The thing you hear about people who live long lives is that they were still passionate about something, still striving," said Brett Conway, who played for Paterno before graduating from Penn State in 1997 and embarking on a six-year career in the NFL as a placekicker. "Once they took that away from him, a lot of us felt he was going to have a tough time surviving.
"I talked to a few teammates this morning and tried to think of something profound to say about the man who did so much for so many of us. But I can't think of any single thing. ... I had my 4-year-old daughter in my lap when the news came on and she asked me who Joe Paterno was. I told her he was my coach, that we called him JoePa and that he was one of the finest men I ever met in my life."
In his quiet moments, Paterno occasionally invoked the fate of Bear Bryant — another coaching legend who died within weeks after stepping down at Alabama — as though it were some kind of cautionary tale. Yet he remained stubborn to the end, beating back more than one previous attempt by higher-ups at the school to force his hand, most recently in 2004. He kept insisting the game hadn't passed him by, and that getting through to kids who weren't as old as some of the sportcoats in his closet was no big deal.
In the only interview granted since his Nov. 9 firing, a frail and sometimes-foggy Paterno told Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post many of the same things he said when news of Sandusky's indictment broke. Most important, that he wished he'd done more when assistant Mike McQueary came to his house on a Saturday morning in 2002, shaken by what he would later tell a grand jury he had seen the night before in a shower at the team's football complex: Sandusky raping a young boy.
Except that out of deference to his aging and decidedly old-school coach, McQueary apparently withheld the most gruesome details from Paterno.
At the time, as in his last interview, it was a story Paterno couldn't — or wouldn't — comprehend.
"You know, he didn't want to get specific," Paterno told the newspaper. "And to be frank with you I don't know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it."
We know now that didn't happen. Paterno never sufficiently explained why, after meeting his legal obligations by notifying his superiors at the university, he didn't satisfy his moral obligation to do more. He said several times he wish he had. People who judged him guilty then will not change their opinions.
"This is not a defense, or an excuse, and maybe it's even a bad analogy," Conway began. "But there were so many things about Joe and his 'old-schoolness' that probably kept him from comprehending the horror of what Jerry had done. He knew something was wrong, something of a sexual nature and ultimately, all he could bring himself to do is what he was supposed to do."
And if the people who ultimately made the decision to fire him measure up to being even half the man he was," he said finally, "I'll be plenty surprised."
Paterno's legacy will forever be clouded, in large part because the chance to prove his remorse in the final chapter of his public life was taken by the trustees and now is gone forever. For the lion's share of his 85 years, though, Paterno piled one good deed atop one another that had nothing to do with football — things that time can't erase, like the library that sits several blocks from the football stadium and was built in large part with his donations back to the school.
On balance, all that good should have been enough to earn him one final opportunity to erase the stain that he called one of the great tragedies of his life.
He deserved better.
Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org
Loss, death make for a season unlike any other
The house at the end of the block was fast taking on the feel of a shrine when Joe Paterno stepped into the crisp November night with his wife, Sue, by his side. Students had gathered on the lawn, some carrying hand-lettered signs, many near tears and all of them confused, sad and angry.
For the first time in nearly half a century, Paterno was no longer Penn State's head coach, fired moments earlier by university trustees desperate to contain the damage caused by a child sex-abuse scandal involving former defensive coordinator and one-time heir apparent Jerry Sandusky. An era was ending, Paterno acknowledged.
"Right now, I'm not the coach. And I've got to get used to that," he said.
A mere 74 days later, Paterno was dead. Paterno's 46th season in charge at Penn State began with a blindside hit — an omen, perhaps, of the trouble to come.
As the Nittany Lions ran drills during a preseason practice Aug. 7, Paterno was watching the defense when wide receiver Devon Smith slammed into the then-84-year-old coach, injuring his shoulder and pelvis. Paterno spent two nights in the hospital, and the injuries would keep him in the pressbox during games for much of the season.
But he returned to practice three days after the collision, insisting the injuries would not force him into retirement.
"The day I wake up in the morning and say, 'Hey, do I have to go to practice again?' then I'll know it's time to get out," Paterno said.
The Nittany Lions began the year as unsettled at quarterback as they had been the previous season, when their 7-6 record was their worst since going 4-7 in 2004. But Penn State's resounding 41-7 victory over FCS opponent Indiana State in the season-opener returned the Nittany Lions to the Top 25 for the first time in 11 months — just in time for a visit from then-No. 3 Alabama, a rare showdown between two of the country's most storied programs.
With Beaver Stadium rocking, Penn State took the lead with a field goal on its first possession. But the Nittany Lions would manage only one more first down the rest of the first half as the Tide rolled to a 27-11 win.
"We certainly deserved a whooping today," Paterno said. "I think we've just got a lot of work ahead of us."
That became even more evident in the following weeks, as the Nittany Lions barely scraped out wins against Temple and lowly Indiana.
But the quarterback debate was eventually resolved — enough, at least, so that the bruising running game and ferocious defense that had been Paterno's formula for success could take over once again. By the time Penn State headed to Northwestern, where Paterno would equal Eddie Robinson's record for most coaching victories, the Nittany Lions were tied with Wisconsin atop their Big Ten division and eligible for a bowl game at 6-1.
"Joe's always talked about Eddie with a great deal of respect, nothing but admiration for him," Paterno's son Jay, Penn State's quarterbacks coach, said then. "When you're in that kind of company, that's pretty elite company."
A week later, on Oct. 29, Penn State slogged out historic victory No. 409 in the snow against Illinois. The Nittany Lions fumbled six times, losing two of them, but Silas Redd scored on a 3-yard run with just over a minute to play to make Paterno the winningest coach in major college football.
The electronic sign boards lit up with congratulations, and fans braved the cold and snow to stick around after the game and celebrate their beloved "JoePa." At the postgame ceremony, Penn State president Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim Curley presented Paterno with a plaque that read, "Joe Paterno. Educator of Men. Winningest Coach. Division One Football."
"It really is something I've very proud of, to be associated with Eddie Robinson," Paterno said. "Something like this means a lot to me, an awful lot."
The victory improved Penn State to 8-1 and bumped the Lions up to No. 16 in the AP poll. As the lone unbeaten left in Big Ten play, with a two-game lead in the loss column in its division, Penn State had the inside track to the conference championship game.
Get there and win, and Paterno and Penn State would be headed to the Rose Bowl.
And then came the concussive blow that only a very few saw coming.
Sandusky, the architect of Penn State's ferocious defenses, was arrested Nov. 5 on charges of sexually abusing a total of 10 boys over 15 years. The details in the grand jury report were graphic and lurid, a shocking rebuttal of Sandusky's reputation as someone devoted to helping at-risk kids. Worse, some of the alleged assaults were placed at the Penn State football complex.
Then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary testified he saw one of those assaults in 2002 and reported it to Paterno, who in turn told his superiors, Curley and university vice president Gary Schultz, who was head of campus security. Paterno insisted McQueary did not use the same graphic descriptions he has in court, where McQueary has said he saw what he believed was Sandusky raping a boy of about 10 or 12 in the Penn State showers. And Paterno swore he had no idea until then that Sandusky was a danger, despite a 1998 incident that was investigated by campus police.
Paterno's failure to call State College police, or even follow up with Curley and Schultz, initially sparked outrage outside Happy Valley.
With the university engulfed in turmoil, Paterno announced on Nov. 9 that he would retire at the end of the season.
"This is a tragedy," Paterno said. "It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more."
The trustees would have none of it. Following a two-hour meeting that same night, vice chair John Surma instructed an assistant athletic director relay a message to Paterno's home to call him.
According to The Washington Post, Surma told Paterno, "In the best interests of the university, you are terminated." Paterno hung up and repeated the words to his wife, who redialed the number.
"After 61 years he deserved better," Sue Paterno said into the phone. "He deserved better." Then she hung up.
"Obviously Joe Paterno is a worldwide icon and has done a tremendous amount for the university," trustee Joel Myers said this week, explaining the board's decision to fire the coach. "We have sorrow and all kinds of emotions, empathy, sympathy for what has occurred. That's universal.
"But the university, this institution is greater than one person."
Enraged students flooded State College streets in protest of Paterno's firing, some throwing rocks and bottles and tipping over a TV news van. But tempers had calmed by Saturday, when Penn State hosted Nebraska in the Nittany Lions' first game in 46 years without Paterno in charge.
Though tailgates parties went on as usual under sunny skies, a sense of surreal surrounded the stadium, as if fans weren't quite sure how to react to Paterno's absence and the events that caused it. Beaver Stadium was awash in blue — the color associated with child-abuse prevention — and public-service announcements flashed on the scoreboard throughout the game. Fans wore shirts and carried signs in support of Paterno, and several students came dressed as JoePa in rolled-up khakis, white socks and thick, dark glasses.
Finally, when Paterno's image was shown in a video montage before the second-half kick-off, the student section let loose with chants of "Joe Paterno! Joe Paterno!"
The joy would be short-lived. The following Friday, Paterno's son Scott announced that his father was being treated for lung cancer, diagnosed the previous weekend. The cancer was treatable, Scott Paterno said, and doctors were optimistic his father would make a full recovery.
But it was apparent Paterno's decline was accelerating. A fall at his home Dec. 10 left him with a fractured pelvis, and he was hospitalized for a week to make it easier to receive his chemotherapy and radiation treatments while he recovered.
The cancer had clearly taken a toll. A picture of a frail Paterno showed him wearing a wig, his thick, dark hair gone. Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, who landed Paterno's only interview after the firing, wrote that his gravelly voice was now a soft rasp, "like wind blowing across a field of winter stalks, rattling the husks." The second part of the interview was done at his bedside; later that day, Jan. 13, he was re-admitted to the hospital, where he died nine days later.
"You know, I'm not as concerned about me," Paterno told Jenkins. "What's happened to me has been great. I got five great kids. Seventeen great grandchildren. I've had a wonderful experience here at Penn State. I don't want to walk away from this thing bitter."
Walking away at all was hard for Paterno to imagine. Football, along with family, was his life, and he saw what happened to his friend and rival, Paul "Bear" Bryant.
"Quit coaching?" Bryant once said. "I'd croak in a week."
He died less than a month after he retired at Alabama.
Bobby Bowden, the longtime Florida State coach and a contemporary of both Paterno and Bryant, said it was more than coincidence.
"I thought the same thing about Coach Bryant," Bowden told the Tallahassee Democrat on Sunday. "He stopped coaching and Coach Bryant died a month later. Here with Joe, he stops coaching and he dies a few weeks later."
-- Nancy Armour
Mitchell: 'We won't let Joe's legacy die'
Former Penn State star Lydell Mitchell visited Joe Paterno about a week and a half ago, hoping to get just a moment with his ailing coach.
After an emotional hour and a half, Mitchell said goodbye and told Paterno that he would always have the support of his players.
"I said, 'Hey, man, we love you.' We'll fight the fight for him," Mitchell said Sunday after Paterno died at age 85.
"Joe's legacy will always be intact because we won't let Joe's legacy die," said Mitchell, who played running back at Penn State from 1968-72.
Paterno won more games (409) than any coach in major college football history during 46 seasons at Penn State.
"I think history will say that he's one of the greatest," former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, second on the wins list, told The Associated Press. "Who's coached longer? Who's coached better? Who's won more games? Who's been more successful than Joe? Who's done more for his university than Joe? You've lost one of the greatest. He probably means the same thing up there that Bear Bryant meant down here. He's an icon."
Sports figures by the dozen, including many Penn State alumni, and fans by the thousands paid tribute to Paterno after the longtime coach died from complications of lung cancer less than three months after he was ousted amid a child sex abuse scandal involving one of his former assistants.
"It's just sad because I think he died from other things than lung cancer," former Penn State tight end Mickey Shuler said.
Before the Penn State wrestling team faced Iowa at Rec Hall on the State College, Pa., campus on Sunday afternoon, a moment of silence was observed.
When it was over the capacity crowd of more than 6,500 gave a 30-second standing ovation while an image of Paterno flashed on two video boards.
The screen flashed the words "Joseph Vincent Paterno. 1926-2012," just below the digitized picture of a smiling Paterno, wearing a blue tie and blue sweater vest with arms crossed across his chest.
"Please recognize now the passing earlier today of Penn State educator, philanthropist and coach, Joe Paterno," the announcer said.
"With coaching milestones too significant too list and impact too substantial to measure, JoePa — as he is known to Nittany Lion fans everywhere — will forever be remembered as a man whose family includes a team, a university and an entire sport," the announcer said. "Thank you Coach Paterno."
There also were moments of silence at Penn State men's and women's basketball games.
Former Penn State assistant coach Tom Bradley, who was interim coach for the Nittany Lions after Paterno was pushed out, called his former boss his "mentor for 37 years."
"Coach Paterno never believed that his role as 'Coach' ended after practice, or when the fourth quarter wound down or when a student-athlete graduated," Bradley said in a statement. "He was a coach for life."
Paterno began his career at Penn State in 1950 as an assistant coach under Rip Engle.
That's when Pro Football Hall of Famer Lenny Moore played for the Nittany Lions. Moore joined Mitchell — they both played for the Colts and live in Baltimore — for that trip to State College a couple weeks back.
Moore said he, Mitchell, Paterno and Paterno's wife, Sue, sat around the kitchen table and talked until it got dark and the visitors needed to get back.
"We talked the whole time and he was very together," Moore said. "Didn't look like he was having any pain. We told him we loved him and we left.
"I'm glad that we had the opportunity to do it. And I was glad that I told him how I felt about him."
Mike Guman, who played fullback for Penn State in the late 1970s, said the Paterno's legacy will be carried on by the many people whose lives he has touched.
"Football's a small part of his legacy, but it goes far beyond that," he said. "You could have become a good football player at many places but you wouldn't have become the man you are if you didn't go to Penn State."
Guman said he didn't think Paterno was treated fairly at the end of his time at Penn State and Mitchell agreed.
"They knew Joe was going to retire (at the end of last season)," Mitchell said "They could have let that play out but I think they panicked and jumped the gun."
Ohio State coach Urban Meyer — one of many sports figures to pay tribute — said he was fortunate to have developed a personal relationship with Paterno over the last few years. In Meyer's last game at Florida, his Gators beat Penn State.
"We have lost a remarkable person and someone who affected the lives of so many people in so many positive ways," Meyer said in statement. "His presence will be dearly missed. His legacy as a coach, as a winner and as a champion will carry on forever."
-- Ralph D. Russo
Paterno could be last of ilk in college football
There will never be another coaching career like Joe Paterno's.
His time at Penn State started long before coaches were pulling down multimillion dollar salaries, before fire so-and-so.com web sites and win-now-or-else attitudes at programs that have rarely contended for championships.
No Division I coach won more games (409) or had a longer run at one school than Paterno.
It's hard to fathom a coach staying at a power program such as Penn State for even 20 years these days, let alone the 46 seasons Paterno led the Nittany Lions.
Coaches who come to define not just a team but a school, Hall of Famers such as Bear Bryant, Tom Osborne, Bo Schembechler, Bobby Bowden and Paterno, seem to be going the way of the wishbone and tear-away jerseys in college football.
"Look what's happening," Bowden told The Associated Press on Sunday, hours after Paterno died at the age of 85. "Coaches getting fired in two years. Coaches making a million dollars here and they get $2 million and they leave. They break a five-year contract. You've got unloyalty at both ends."
The 82-year-old Bowden was nudged into retirement two years ago after 34 seasons at Florida State. Paterno was fired during a chaotic week in November after his former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, was charged with sexually abusing children.
He found out about Paterno's death when he arrived home Sunday morning after coaching a charity game between former Florida State and Miami players. Former Hurricanes coach Howard Schnellenberger, who retired from Florida Atlantic after this past season at the age of 77, was coaching the Miami squad.
Bowden and Paterno became friends over the years partly because, as they grew older, they could relate to each like few other coaches could.
"We'd sit and talk and discuss a lot of NCAA questions," Bowden said. "Those were great memories. My wife Ann and Sue (Paterno's wife) got along real good together too."
Bowden said he'd written a letter to Paterno "not too long ago," but hadn't spoken with him for some time.
"Bobby always thought so much of Joe," Ann Bowden said. "He was just a unique character. Joe was very strong and outspoken. He and Bobby were different in a lot of respects. He'd been there a longer time and he was stronger, more forceful, said what he thought. Bobby guards himself a little bit when he says something."
With Schnellenberger's retirement, Kansas State's 72-year-old Bill Snyder is the oldest active coach in major college football.
Snyder has spent 21 seasons with the Wildcats, but even that was interrupted by a three-year retirement when he hit a rough patch.
After Paterno was fired, Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer became the longest-tenured coach working in the highest level of Division I football.
"College football will miss Joe Paterno," said Beamer, who is 65 and has been leading the Hokies since 1987.
The next-longest continuous tenure among current coaches belongs to 60-year-old Mack Brown, who has been at Texas since 1998.
"I think that the changes in communications and media (changes that of course accelerated Joe's termination once the grand jury indictments were issued) create a level of scrutiny and pressure that will make 10 years at the same FBS school rare," Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said in an email.
Some of Notre Dame's greatest coaches (Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian and Lou Holtz) only lasted around a decade, but lately the storied program has been emblematic of the revolving door many schools have on the football coach's office.
Brian Kelly is Notre Dame's fourth head coach since 1997; its fifth if you count the days-long tenure of George O'Leary. As for Kelly, Notre Dame is his third job since 2004, though he was climbing the ladder from Central Michigan to Cincinnati to one of the most celebrated football schools in the country.
Even elite top-notch programs get used as steppingstones these days.
Alabama's Nick Saban left Michigan State for LSU, where he won a national title in 2003. He then bailed on the Tigers for the Miami Dolphins before landing at Alabama and winning two national championships for the Tide in five seasons.
"I think the cycles for head coaches will be shorter, much as we've seen in pro sports," West Virginia Athletic Director Oliver Luck said.
At 60, Saban looks as if he could easily put in another 10 years in Tuscaloosa. But with a salary approaching $5 million, why would he want to? Paterno only ever made about $1 million a year, by the way, relatively modest by today's standards.
"Coaches are making so much money that if they're successful they can retire early in life and if they're not successful the school is going to get rid of them real quick," Bowden said. "It's not likely we're going to see anybody last as long as Joe and myself."
-- Ralph D. Russo
Experts: Paterno's death won't stop court cases
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Joe Paterno would no doubt have made a dramatic courtroom witness. But legal experts said his death will have little or no effect on the criminal or civil cases to come out of the Penn State child sex-abuse scandal.
"Obviously, you're taking away a great deal of the high-profile nature of this case, because it deals with Joe Paterno's football program," said Jeffrey Lindy, a criminal defense lawyer involved in a clergy-abuse case in Philadelphia. "But with regard to the legal impact of his death, there is none."
Paterno died Sunday at 85, two months after former coaching assistant Jerry Sandusky was charged with molesting boys and two university officials were accused of perjury and failing to report child sex-abuse allegations against Sandusky to police.
The criminal case against the two university officials may even become more streamlined without Paterno in the mix.
Former university vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley are charged with failing to report to police what graduate assistant Mike McQueary said he told them in 2002: that McQueary saw Sandusky sexually assaulting a boy in a locker room shower.
McQueary first told Paterno, who said he reported it to Curley and Schultz the next day. The administrators told the grand jury they were never informed that the allegations were sexual in nature.
With Paterno's death, though, a jury is free to focus not on what Paterno knew or did, but on the defendants' actions.
What McQueary told Paterno "was a distraction, and now that that part of the case is really gone, it will focus much more on his interaction not with Paterno, but with the Penn State officials," said Duquesne University law professor Nicholas P. Cafardi.
McQueary is also the more crucial witness in the case against Sandusky, who is charged with abusing 10 boys, at least two of them on the Penn State campus.
Paterno testified for just seven minutes last January before the grand jury. He gave only vague answers — and was never pressed — when asked what he knew about anyone accusing Sandusky of molesting boys.
"Without getting into any graphic detail, what did Mr. McQueary tell you he had seen and where?" Paterno was asked, according to the grand jury testimony read in court last month.
"Well, he had seen a person, an older — not an older, but a mature person who was fondling, whatever you might call it — I'm not sure what the term would be — a young boy," Paterno replied.
He was asked if he ever heard of any other allegations against Sandusky, who had been the subject of a lengthy campus police investigation four years earlier after a mother complained Sandusky had showered with her young son at the football complex.
"I do not know of anything else that Jerry would be involved in of that nature, no. I do not know of it," Paterno said, adding, "You did mention — I think you said something about a rumor. It may have been discussed in my presence, something else about somebody. I don't know."
Paterno's grand jury testimony cannot be used in court, because the defense never had the chance to cross-examine him.
"His passing deprives folks from finding out, directly from his lips, exactly what he knew and when he knew it, and what he did or didn't do. But the reality is, sometimes those things can be proved by other means," said Jeff Anderson, the St. Paul, Minn., lawyer who filed the first civil case against Penn State on behalf of a Sandusky accuser.
It's not unusual for a witness to die or become infirm before trial, especially in child sex-abuse cases, which can take years or even decades to surface. In Philadelphia, prosecutors won the right to question 88-year-old retired Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua on video last year to preserve his testimony before the spring trial of three priests and a church official. Bevilacqua suffers from dementia and cancer.
Prosecutors never got the chance to preserve Paterno's testimony, given his surprise cancer diagnosis and rapid decline after they filed the charges Nov. 4.
-- Maryclaire Dale
