Yes, it appears he was negligent in reacting to whatever he was told about Sandusky by the graduate assistant, but hindsight is always 20-20. I wasn't there, and don't know exactly what happened. But the man called "Joe Pa" accomplished more than just winning football games, and donating millions out of his own pocket to the university, which helped elevate a once agricultural college for rural Pennsylvania farm boys into a major research university with outstanding academics.
Let me explain.
The man people called Joe Pa was ahead of his time when it came to race relations.
One part of his career that has been lost among his accomplishments, that many of his early teams were at the forefront of racial integration in college football. When Paterno came to Penn State as an assistant in 1950, he was a part of one of the first major college programs in the country that openly welcomed black players on to the team, even if the town of State College was not as welcoming.
Penn State started admitting blacks in the 1940s. Running back Wally Triplett was the school's first black Varsity player, starting for Penn State from 1946 to 1949, and was one of three blacks recruited to the school that eventually led to having one of the largest groups of black players in the country by the mid-50s.
I had no idea. My memory of Penn State was the town of State College, that part of PA between Philly and Pittsburg that James Carville astutely described as "Alabama."
And there's more...
Paterno took over as the head coach in 1966 and ran into similar issues in 1969. With Penn State staring down a potential National Championship Cotton Bowl match-up, this time against the all-white University of Texas, instead of bringing his team down to Dallas again, the school opted for the Orange Bowl in Miami instead.
Paterno's teams were long-regarded for their academic performance off the field as well as the high percentage of black players that graduated from the school. Penn State ranked number one in the New America Foundation's Academic BCS teams in 2009 and 2011 -- Paterno's final season -- graduating 80 percent of its football players in six years or less.
The rankings also showed no achievement gap between its black and white players, which New America noted is extremely rare for Division I-A football teams.
You can read the full article by Jay Scott Smith in The Grio.
Joe, you made a major mistake in your 85 years, but it doesn't wipe out all the good you did. Not to all of us. Rest in Peace. And may God forgive you for the mistake you did make.