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| courtesy of yahoo.com |
The world has been watching the past week as the health of the legendary football coach, Joe Paterno, rapidly took a turn for the worse. Saturday night, Paterno’s family summoned friends and long time staff members to the hospital to say their final goodbyes where the legendary coach passed away Sunday morning. He was 85 years old.
Joe Paterno will forever be remembered as a legendary college football coach who headed the Penn State Nittany Lions football team for 46 years and served on the coaching staff for 61 years. During his career, Paterno would achieve the most wins of any division one head coach in college football history (409); a record that is far from being reached. Along with his record of wins, Joe Paterno holds the record of number of bowl appearances with 37 appearances; winning 24 of them, which is also a college football record. Paterno is the only coach to appear in all of the major bowl games; the Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl. Perhaps, Paterno’s most important wins came in 1982 and 1986 as he won the national championship in both seasons.
The end of Joe Paterno’s career was swarmed in a whirlwind of disgrace and scandal surrounding the sex abuse allegations brought against former assistant, Jerry Sandusky. While it was believed that Joe Paterno did nothing about the allegations, Paterno later revealed that he did go to the athletic director of Penn State about the allegations although some thought that was not enough. Among those was the Penn State Board of Trustees who announced on November 9, 2011 that Paterno had been fired from his head coaching position.
Paterno will be remembered not only for his records that he set, but also for his devotion to Penn State University. Like any other successful head coach, Joe Paterno received numerous offers from NFL teams for head coaching positions, all of which Paterno turned down in order to stay in Penn State. Paterno was also asked to step down throughout the last 20 years of his career because some thought he had been coaching “too long”; however Paterno chose to stay at Penn State. Along with his wide scaled recognition across the college football world, his family said in a statement, “He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players, and his community.”
Paterno is survived by his wife, 5 children, 17 grandchildren, and many inspired players throughout his career.
Paterno is survived by his wife, 5 children, 17 grandchildren, and many inspired players throughout his career.
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