Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/83706
change the minds of people who made their judgments in the immedi- ate aftermath of the scandal and have grown tired of hear- ing about Penn State and Paterno. Time, Posnanski said, is the one thing that could change the dynam- ic. He noted that public opinion has already shifted to some degree, even though it's only been a few months since the release of the Freeh report, CRITICAL MASS A sampling of 'Paterno' reviews Throughout Paterno's 61-year run at Penn State, he was often accused of being a phony – of not caring as much as he pretend- ed to about academics, of being smug and sanctimonious and hypocriti- cal. He could be a bully to his players. He was mostly absent from his own kids' lives. He had few close friends and was hard to know. "Pater- no" doesn't shy away from whatever truth is behind any of this stuff. But the author talks to many, many former players who felt lucky to know this man, who say he taught them about decency and hard work and changed their lives forever. Was Paterno a phony? Someone once suggested something similar about the longtime Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden. Mr. Posnanski reprints a sportswriter's response to that insinuation here: "Well, to do it that long, it's one hell of an act." DWIGHT GARNER THE NEW YORK TIMES Posnanski's fluffy, 400-plus-page opus provides sparse guidance. What it inadvertently does, for the highly careful reader, is expose how a coach and a writer can sacrifice their integrity over time, one compro- mised decision at a time. It's difficult to discern what is most shallow in Posnanski's book – the reporting, the access or the insight. A mere 26 pages in and the "journalist" who reportedly had unprecedented access to Paterno, the coach's family, confidants and football program is re- duced to retelling a story spoken by a female football intern at a Paterno memorial service recalling the coach walking into his office, catching her eyes and remarking: "It's cold out there, heh?" JASON WHITLOCK FOXSPORTS.COM Let's simply say this book whiffs on many levels. Don't look for Pos- nanski's biography to determine whether Joe Paterno could have stopped Jerry Sandusky from abusing children. Posnanski, who injects himself into the story at annoying rates, writes early in the book: "The only thing ever asked of me was to write the truth as I found it." The only significant truth unearthed is that Paterno didn't like Sandusky. GUY CIPRIANO CENTRE DAILY TIMES It's hard not to feel sorry for Posnanski, whose boat was already rolling down the ramp, more or less, as the cannons started firing. ANDREW BEAUJON POYNTER.ORG the removal of the Paterno statue and the NCAA's announcement of heavy sanctions against Penn State. "When the Freeh report came out, about two months ago now, the at- mosphere was so unbelievably toxic," he said. "It was just awful. I think you all saw it. It was just a huge tidal wave. And now it's two months later and, like I say, it's different. It's a lit- tle bit different now. "There are a lot of people who ques- tioned the Freeh report. I would imagine there will be more. I think that's going to happen. There's going to be a trial in January that I think is going to be extremely interesting for a lot of people." The trial of former Penn State ath- letic director Tim Curley and univer- sity vice president Gary Schultz is set to take place in Harrisburg in Janu- ary. Posnanski lamented the failure of so many parties – including the na- tional media and the university itself – to step back and evaluate carefully the entirety of the situation. But he also expressed hope that the public will grow less polarized over time and will come to accept that Paterno was a complex figure who did not fit the simplistic labels that were applied to him in the aftermath of the Sandusky scandal. "When you have that big of a fall, people at first might go along with it," he said, "but after a while, you start wondering, 'Why did you tell me for 50 years he was this incredible man, and now all of a sudden you're telling me he was a horrible man. Why? What happened here?' "You start asking, and I believe that's hopefully what the book does. You look for who the real person was in the middle. Because he wasn't Saint Joe. Nobody is. Nobody lives up to that. But he's not [that low] either. He's not the devil here. "To the person in the middle, I think it takes a while for that to crystallize, but I think it will. I really do. I believe over time it will. Certain things will come out, certain things will emerge, both ways, and we'll have a much clearer picture." –NATE BAUER