LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Jim Murray, the legendary Los Angeles Times columnist, loved Joe Paterno.
Murray once wrote that Paterno was different from other schmucks who coached major college sports because winning with integrity was first in Paterno's playbook. Murray was hardly the only one gaga about Joe Pa.
I'll share other love letters to Paterno that I've uncovered. But I'll begin with Murray.
In 1997, Murray, a first-team press box Hall of Famer, wrote that Paterno may be the best football coach of all time.
Not college football coach. Football coach.
Murray said that Paterno's players (not coaches) do not star in court cases a decade from their prime. He said the only reason the Big Ten welcomed Penn State into the league was because of the presence of Paterno and his model way of operating.
Murray asked Paterno this question: Would he ever join the list of what Murray called rogue coaches willing to sign a rapist if his athletic skills could lead the team to the Rose Bowl?
Murray wrote that Paterno shook his head and said this, "You know it's going to be trouble down the line. You don't need that."
That column was written May 8, 1997 – and about a year later Joe Paterno and Penn State lost control of their football program.
The talk of the town today is Penn State football and the unprecedented penalties that the NCAA pinned on Paterno's former program Monday. Millions of dollars in fines. A four-season ban on post-season play. Five years of NCAA probation. Fourteen seasons of vacated victories. Scholarship limitations. Approval for current Penn State players to transfer to other programs with immediate eligibility.
All of this is the result of an alleged cover-up by Paterno and other Penn State administrators of the horrific crimes committed by former PSU assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, a convicted pedophile.
The NCAA gave Penn State's, Paterno's model program, the death penalty without calling it the death penalty. Never mind the love letters. If Paterno and Penn State football can be turned upside down, any coach and program can go down.
Penn State has long been considered a national program on the same tier with Alabama, USC, Texas, Ohio State, Oklahoma and others. The forecast today is that Penn State will be nationally irrelevant for the next decade or more.
Fair? Unfair? A rush to judgment? Excessive? Inadequate?
All those questions have been debated relentlessly since the NCAA announced the penalties Monday morning. The debate will be continue. The NCAA has never taken down a program the way it took down Penn State, especially considering Paterno's status as Saint Joe.
The overdue/overkill discussion will rage for days, weeks, months, years.
Just like the deification of Joe Paterno continued for years. It wasn't simply Jim Murray. It was Red Smith, Dave Anderson, Dan Jenkins, everybody. Read parts of those columns again today, and remember that everybody bought into the Joe Paterno Story.
Anderson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at the New York Times, wrote that Paterno would be the perfect choice as the next coach of the New York Giants. The Giants "needed" Paterno. Smith, another legendary Timesman, wrote a similar column.
Rick Reilly has been named national sports writer of the year 11 times. One of his first signature stories was a Sports Illustrated cover piece about Paterno, when SI named the coach the national sports writer of the year in 1986.
This is just one thing Reilly said about Paterno: "In an era of college football in which it seems everybody's hand is either in the till or balled up in a fist, Paterno sticks out like a clean thumb."
Joe Posnanski, another national sports writer of the year, just finished a book about Paterno that started as a project about a coach who "changed the country, one football player at a time."
According to the New York Times, the book's promotional material actually said that.
Nobody on press row writes funny stuff better than Dan Jenkins. Even Jenkins got serious when writing about Paterno: "He will look like a New York City detective and talk like a social worker. More than that, he will like the idea of having players on his team who can read."
More? No problem. Furman Bisher grew up in the South, a man who covered a ton of Southeastern Conference football for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Bisher wrote that he considered Paterno a friend. He wrote that visitors needed to travel to State College, Pa., "to get an eyeful of how it's done or how it should be done."
There was more. Much more. But today there is mainly this reminder:
If Paterno and Penn State football can be turned upside down, any coach and program can go down.
Copyright 2012 WDRB News. All Rights Reserved.
Jim Murray, Dave Anderson, Dan Jenkins, it seemed like everybody in the press box admired Joe Paterno.
