Joe Paterno clutches his halo now, like a drowning man does a life preserver. That's all that's left for him. The halo. He's the great Paterno and no one dares ever doubt his word. He's going to tell everyone why Penn State has stumbled, and you're going to listen, write it down and consider it the gospel truth.
When you're winning, they'll believe everything. All the great ones know that, and there never have been two sides of a story in Happy Valley. Just Joe Pa, his national championships and his standing as NCAA purity.
These days, the old coach hears the tough questions and tells people that he's been there for 55 years and doesn't deserve to be asked about any of this nonsense. There was a time he wouldn't have to tell that to someone twice, that's for damn sure.
These are the perks and privileges of Saturday afternoon sainthood, the old coach's word and reasoning deserving to be treated like they come out of the football burning bush.
"There are a lot of ways to remedy different things and some of them I don't want to do," Paterno was saying last week, suggesting that Penn State's spiral purely is a product of his unbending values and principles.
Whatever he does, whatever he says, it can't be challenged. It can't be critiqued. It can't be questioned.
Why? He's Joe Paterno.
Once, the best of Paterno made everyone believe that football didn't need to be larger than a university, that it could fit into the fabric of academic and campus life, that a championship coach didn't need to distance himself from a university community. He could embrace it.
Now, Paterno is threatening to be remembered as the coach who believed he was bigger than it all, who held his proud football program hostage after decades of holding it like a jewel in a dirty collegiate landscape.
Penn State owes Paterno a lifetime position of prestige at the university, but it doesn't owe him the job of football coach. No school anywhere, or ever, owed any coach that.
A year ago, I believed Penn State needed to honor the final year of his contract and let him coach the 2004 season. The administration didn't stop there, it extended him. It was purely a public-relations ploy to convince high school recruits they'll get to play for Paterno, but let's face it: The kids don't think that's such a big deal anymore.
Paterno used to make his living raiding the best recruits out of Jersey, but Virginia's Al Groh has started dominating the state. Greg Schiano gets a share for Rutgers, too.
The old-world order has changed for Paterno, but the problems for Penn State aren't with rival recruiters or star receivers' grades or anything outside the program itself. Paterno is 78 years old, and it's over. That's all. He can be the youngest 78-year-old in America, but this is a young man's profession now. Schiano was standing in the rain Friday night scouting high school playoff games in northern Jersey. For a program as far down as Penn State's is now, it needs a head coach out there too.
And that'll never happen with Joe Paterno again, and no one wants to blame him for it. He shouldn't have to be out there. Yet, that's the price needed to pay to turn a loser into a winner, and it's simply too much to expect out of him anymore.
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