Armour: The only place to honor Joe Paterno is in the record books
The only place to honor Joe Paterno is in the record books.
No statues. No shrines. No place to lay flowers and genuflect, as if his considerable success on the football field grants him godlike status.
Reports Thursday and Friday have raised new questions about how early Paterno knew that assistant Jerry Sandusky was sexually abusing children. CNN published an interview Friday with a man who claims Paterno ignored his complaint of being raped by Sandusky in 1971. According to court documents reported Thursday night by Pennlive.com, a child may have told Paterno in 1976 that he'd been abused by Sandusky.
And citing court documents and sources with direct knowledge of the legal proceedings, NBC News said Friday that as many as six Penn State assistants may have witnessed "inappropriate behavior" between Sandusky and boys. It's not clear if any of the assistants reported what they had seen.
The revelations, though shocking, are a reminder of what we learned in 2011 when everything changed in Happy Valley: Paterno made mistakes. He was flawed and had blindspots. That doesn’t make him evil, it makes him mortal.
And we ought not be idolizing mortals — certainly not in the fashion that Paterno supporters who have pushed for the return of his statue want.
A February 2015 poll by Quinnipiac University found that Pennsylvania residents overwhelmingly favored — 59% to 25% — the return of the Paterno statue, which was removed from outside Beaver Stadium in 2012. Earlier this year, the men who did the casting for the original statue said they were making two replicas, one of which would be given to Paterno’s family and the other to be displayed at fan events.
Just this week, the Penn State Alumni Association asked the university to consider honoring Paterno this fall to commemorate the 50th anniversary of him becoming head coach.
“We strongly encourage the members of the Board of Trustees and the University Administration to join together with the Paterno family to develop an appropriate plan to honor Joe Paterno this year,” the association wrote in a letter obtained by Onward State.
But the only appropriate honor for Paterno already exists: His name at the top of the list of winningest coaches. You can celebrate the man's accomplishments without deifying the man himself.
Paterno’s legacy has been a complicated thing since the day Sandusky was arrested in November 2011.
JoePa was beloved at Penn State, as much for his loyalty and largess to the school as his record 409 victories. But Paterno also acknowledged that he had been told about Sandusky’s crimes in 2001 and, after alerting the then-athletic director and a university vice president, did nothing more.
A report by special investigator Louis Freeh found that Paterno was aware of allegations against Sandusky in 1998.
Sandusky was convicted in June 2012 of 45 counts of child sex abuse. Penn State has agreed to pay more than $60 million to settle claims by at least 30 alleged victims.
The document that was made public Thursday night comes from a lawsuit over who is responsible for paying those claims. The allegation was made by an insurance company, which is trying to get out of writing a big check. It’s also worth noting there is nothing to corroborate the claim. “Bunk,” Paterno’s son, Scott, called it.
That may be true. It may not be. With Paterno dead and 40 years passed, we’ll never know for sure who knew what and when about one of the most appalling chapters in American higher education. On Friday, Sue Paterno sent the Penn State board of trustees a letter asking that any records related to Sandusky be released to "give everyone a chance to see the truth about what you know."
But even if the university does that, it won't change the fact that Sandusky’s crimes and the silence that allowed them to continue was a profound betrayal of common decency and the public trust. And Paterno played a part in that. There is no way to separate him from such ugliness, and it’s best not to try.
Let the record books honor Paterno, and save the statue for someone else.
Follow columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.