Joe Pa

Why is this story here, I know? Aside that Joe Paterno has traits, features, and character could be attributed as Indian qualities. I do know that Indian football fans have great admiration for this man regardless of their faith. Yeah, he could have Roma, Sinti, and so on ancestry for my interest. But that is not why?  The answer is due to this cynical view in Indian politics. "If you aren't corrupt then your children are." Before Matt Millen goes crazy on me ("What! Just because I achieve, my children can't achieve without straight forward honesty like I did"), I will explain the wisdom of this expression.

An individual is corrupt because you are hiding the truth of what you are really doing. The second part is you are hiding the truth of what your children are doing. The question becomes at what price is an individual hiding the truth or truths? Indian folks can definitely relate to this particularly a parent. But it is not about achievement vs. underachievement and why that you see haters talk about so much. Or high achieving parents and their low achieving children. Maybe, if its not done honestly.

In Joe's case, he has graduated a lot of folks and done it the right way on his football team. His Grand Experiment of being great in the field and classroom has worked. The players that he has graduated are constantly higher than the national average since he became coach in 1966.  He has two national championships and 5 undefeated seasons to boot. Likewise, they have done well in life as well besides playing in the NFL. I think about Jack Ham, Dave Robinson, Franco Harris, Mike Reid, Matt Suhey, and Ted Kwalick for the success they have had off the field. One thing I respected him is his honesty in saying that he was harder on Italian players because he wanted them to so well. LOL.

In addition, he has been very loyal to folks like Kerry Collins, John Cappelletti, Blair Thomas, Joe Jurevicius, and many others who failed in the NFL for one or many teams. It was his persuasion them kept them in the NFL. Example, current Colts coach, Jim Caldwell. He didn't play for Joe but was a QB coach for Joe during their six years together. He got the head coaching job at Wake Forest in 1993 but his teams just stunk but he stayed for eight years before getting fired. The next year, he got on Tony Dungy's staff based on a recommendation from star QB, Kerry Collins from his Giants' days? Yeah right, it was Joe Pa for why he stayed at Wake Forest and how he got to the Bucs.

Jim Caldwell is Joe Paterno's mentor. He is also a mentor to current Rutgers coach, Greg Schiano. When he was Athletic Director, he mentored Renee Portland, the women's basketball coach. He covered her homophobic attitude and her roughneck attitude towards her players that resulted in lawsuits and protests. The players that he coached were his children but very few would be his mentors. Matt Millen is one and Jerry Sandusky is the other. For Matt,  he really persuaded the Ford's to hire him and keep him when things went south. But for Jerry, he just stayed on as his assistant hoping to take over Joe when he retired. But Joe never left so Jerry retired abruptly in 1999.

My question becomes why did Jerry retire and not take a coaching job somewhere else?  He had to know that Joe was not going to give up Penn State. Likewise, why didn't Joe didn't do anything like he did for others? Well, my research says that Joe did but Jerry kept turning them jobs down like the one at Temple in 1988. Not only that, he turned down the Maryland job not once, not twice but three "bleepin" times in 1991, 1996, and 2000! Others blogs have mentioned that Joe was getting concerned in the early 80's that he was turning down so many head coaching jobs. The answer was the Second Mile home he was running for troubled youths since 1977.  He wanted to run his home which was located in Happy Valley. Going to another place, he would have to find another camp to run?

If that was a teenager or young college grad, it would have been called "failure to launch." Matter of fact, he got his parents to run that home as administrators in 1982.  Undercover officers with a help of a concerned parent, said that Sandusky admitted showering with a child in the Penn State locker rooms in the mid to late 90's. The district attorney from that county decided that no criminal charges will be filed. However due to the allegations, Sandusky left the program in 1999 but still had access to the PSU campus. Which bring me to this, is this a witch-hunt or something really tragic? Until the truth comes out, Matt Millen, one of Joe Pa's kids and mentor, says this,  "its time for Joe Pa to step up and tell the truth."  Like a father and mentor should.