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Knudson: The Lesson of Joe Paterno

By Mark Knudson, The Mtn. Insider
January 23, 2012

There’s no other way to feel but sad on a number of fronts about the news of the passing of Joe Paterno. But, there could also be a lesson to be learned from what happened to college football’s winningest coach over the last several months.

Time will tell what Coach Paterno’s lasting legacy will be. There can be no doubt that even years from now, it will be stained to some degree by the events that occurred at the end of his legendary career. Still, the numbers are on his side and they read straight out of a Hall of Fame induction speech. In a nutshell, Joe Paterno will forever be a Hall of Fame coach who erred horribly during the last decade of his career.

It was during his last 10 years (and maybe earlier) that Paterno was made aware of former assistant Jerry Sandusky’s (allegedly) despicable behaviors. It was 10 years ago that he chose to hand off the responsibility of dealing with Sandusky to others. That was of course his huge mistake, and that’s where the lesson lies.

The 75-year-old Joe Paterno made a mistake that a 55-year-old Paterno would not have made.  The fact of the matter is that like many other athletes and coaches, Joe Paterno stayed too long. He should have retired from coaching – legacy intact and dignity unblemished – well before the news about Sandusky ever surfaced. Like others such as Brett Favre, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, Paterno’s ego would not allow him retire gracefully with much deserved fanfare and accolades as Tom Osborne and John Elway did, for example. Had Joe Pa stepped down at age 72, for instance – still long after most coaches hang it up – he would already be in the Hall of Fame, his name on a Big 10 trophy and his legacy forever sterling.

And he might very well still be alive.

This is not to diminish in any way the effects of lung cancer or cancer treatments, which can be brutal. Cancer is cancer and everyone knows it’s a killer. But part of you has to wonder if 85-year-old Joe Paterno would have been able to better battle the disease, which by most accounts was diagnosed in a fairly early stage, had he not also been dealing with the tremendous stress and strain of the entire Sandusky ordeal.

This was a prideful man who was driven out of the job he loved and forced to watch as everything crashed around him in the span of a few days. The mental anguish had to be incredible. Then came the news that he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer on top of all that. A double whammy, which was too much to overcome.

We may come to find out that Joe Paterno’s cancer would have ended his life in January of 2012 regardless of whether or not he was still coaching football. Then again, who knows? What if instead of dealing with Sandusky, a retired Paterno was doing credit card commercials with Lou Holtz and Bobby Bowden when he got the news about the cancer diagnosis? Doesn’t it stand to reason that he could have put up a better fight?

Around the Mountain West, we’ve seen coaching legends like Sonny Lubick, LaVell Edwards and Fisher DeBerry end their coaching careers a bit sooner than maybe they wanted to but certainly during a time in each of their lives when retirement was a reasonable option. All three men retain well-deserved iconic status today.  Would that status be guaranteed if any of them had stayed too long and ended up making a horrible, life changing decision because they weren’t quite as sharp as they used to be?

In the coming days, there will be numerous people attaching Joe Paterno to Paul “Bear” Bryant, the legendary Alabama football coach who passed away just four weeks after announcing his retirement at age 69. Many people think that way. I have a good friend who’s putting off retirement not because he needs the money, but because in his words, “You stop working, you die.”

I have to respectfully disagree.

In the case of Joe Paterno, we may have lost the coaching icon precisely because he wouldn’t stop working.
See all of Mark Knudson's blog entries HERE.