'Devastated' JoePa Retiring After Season

After 61 years of dedicated service to his players and the game of football, legendary head football coach Joe Paterno is set to retire at the end of the season. In a recent and horrific scandal, former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been accused of sexual assaulting at least nine boys during his time spent around the Penn State program. With the school and its officials under heavy fire, Paterno has been a subject of doubt and anger from the university, media, and fans alike.

Despite the fact that his Hall of Fame career is coming to the worst possible end, don’t let the actions of another man (as well as the lack of action from Timothy Curley and Gary Schultz) take away from the amazing accomplishments and career of “Joe Pa”. The man took Penn State to 36, count ‘em, 36 bowl games and won 24 of them. He led the Nittany Lions to 2 national championships and had a mind-blowing 401-135-3 record going into the current 2011-2012 season. He has been named Big Ten Coach of the Year three times (most recently in 2008), which puts him in second place behind Bo Schembechler who ended his coaching career with four. Aside from being voted the best coach in his conference three times, Joe Pa was voted National Coach of the Year an astounding five times.

But statistics can’t always do a man justice, you have to look beyond the numbers and take notice of the man’s personality and all-around toughness. In November of 2006, Paterno was standing on the sideline as one of his defenders forced a Wisconsin player out of bounds and right into the then 79 year old coach. Paterno would suffer a broken leg, yet still returned to the sideline later in the season. In a related story, just this past August, a wide receiver ran into Joe Pa during a practice which ultimately resulted in a hip and shoulder injury for Penn State’s head coach. Rather than look for sympathy or draw attention from the media, Paterno simply stated “I expect to be back at practice soon. I'm doing fine; tell everyone not to worry about me.” Though he has coached from the booth for much of the season this year, it shows how dedicated and willing to compete Joe Paterno is.

Along the same lines, Joe Paterno has run one of the most honest programs in such a dishonest sport nowadays. A week doesn’t go by when you don’t hear about illegal recruiting or something along those lines. Joe Pa never had a recruiting violation and was never suspected of any unruly acts (until the Sandusky scandal hit the fan). Paterno taught the importance of integrity and character to his players and believed that said characteristics were not only to be related to football, but to life as a whole. It's a shame a few men ruined it for him.

The Sandusky scandal certainly sheds bad light on Paterno’s career. I guarantee this isn’t how he wanted to go out. Could he control Sandusky’s actions? No. Could he have done more to put a stop to Sandusky’s actions? Probably. Yet in his defense, Paterno brought attention to the incident he was notified of and it was the university’s higher authorities who failed to act. At the end of the day, Paterno was a football coach, not a babysitter for Sandusky. Some blame can be placed on Joe Pa as we have already seen in this developing story, but don’t let this horrific scandal ruin the career and memories Joe Paterno has presented us with. He’s the best to ever coach football at the collegiate level and has the statistics, not to mention the character, of what college sports SHOULD be all about. The game will miss him, Penn State will miss him, and college football fans will miss him. It’s been fun Joe Pa, that was a heck of a career.