AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > June > 02 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USPaterno upholds values at Penn State
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Leave it to Joe Paterno. He’s more than 80 years old and loves to coach a football team. He got so close to the action last season that a leg was broken in a sideline pile-up. He still kept showing up, on crutches or wheels. He believes football is a team game. No players’ names on Nittany Lion jerseys, which are as plain and unadorned as a garbage collector’s, which brings me around to the subject of the day.
In early April, one of his players, Anthony Scirrotto, and a girlfriend were insulted on the street and Scirrotto was slugged by some passers-by. He called some of his teammates, and a number of them, 14 or 15, came to his aid and crashed a party where the sluggers had come from, and a bigtime brawl broke out. More football players joined in, and in the end, it all wound up in court in State College.
Paterno waited for the legal process to play out; then he swung into action. The punishment he dealt will go down in history, and might get the attention of coaches who usually punish such dudes by ordering them to run stadium steps, or do workouts at dawn. Not Joe. Rather than try to sort it all out, he laid a sentence on the whole team. Get this:
Next season, the Penn State football team, all of them, will clean up Beaver Stadium after each home game, tidying up after 107,282 guests. That’s how many Beaver Stadium seats. The players will get a major test right off. Notre Dame plays there in early September, after which the place will look like a storm struck. There willl be seven home games in all, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio State and Purdue to follow.
But why the whole team? Wouldn’t some of the innocents say, “Why me? I wasn’t there.”
Paterno answered the question before it was asked. Rather than try to figure out who did what to whom and who was to blame, he went for the whole team, once again demonstrating an above-average standard, as one might expect of a Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year choice, not once, but twice.
“I just thought we had 14 or 15 kids — I don’t know how many — that were involved in something embarrassing and I wanted to prove that we are not a bunch of hoodlums,” Joe said. “I don’t condone fighting. Our kids were wrong.”
First thing the average alumnus would worry about is, “Oh, my gosh, what will this do to our recruiting?” Well, Paterno isn’t worried about recruits. He’s worried about the reputation of Penn State football. This was a shot across the bow.
Usually, stadium clean-up is handled by members of club sports teams at Penn State, crew, lacrosse, volleyball, soccer and such. They share a $5,000 fee for each game. The clubs will continue to join in the clean-up, and collect the same fee, but this season they’ll have some upper-class help. As a sort of warm-up for the job ahead, Penn State’s football players will build a house for Habitat for Humanity and work with Special Olympics this summer.
“We’re all going to do it. We’re in this together. This is a team embarrassment,” Paterno said. If anything like this has ever been done before, it has never been recorded in the history of college football — at that level at least. In the small-college leagues, perhaps, but as a necessity there, not as punishment.
“So far, the only reaction we’ve had,” Jeff Nelson, the sports information director, said, “has been e-mails and others expressing support and pleasure. Of course, students are away for the summer and the campus newspaper isn’t being published.”
But this is not something that will rock Paterno’s boat. He has weathered storms before and charged back. “Team” is Paterno’s theme, as he said: “We’re all in this together.” His main concern may be when cameras and reporters show up on Sunday morning, making a story of it, players collecting wrappers, cups and such trash, hosing down stairs and doing the work of a garbage crew.
Call it the Paterno Rule. He wants to prove that Penn State players aren’t “trashy.”
Permalink | Comments (19) | Post your comment | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
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By WFC
June 2, 2007 6:35 AM | Link to this
I saw one of Joe Pa’s first losses, a 21-0 pasting by Bobby Dodd’s last team in 1966. Little did I know that Paterno would become a legend and a role model beyond belief. My son isn’t a football player, but if he were, there is no doubt who I would want him to play for.
By Jack P
June 2, 2007 10:13 AM | Link to this
Paterno is the best coach in the history of college football. Right on Joe!
By Edward Butka
June 2, 2007 11:30 AM | Link to this
Joe Paterno is the only division one coach in the country with his name on a library…not a football stadium. Doesn’t that tell you everything you want to know about his priorities?
By Gary T.
June 2, 2007 12:13 PM | Link to this
Excuse me, do any of us older folks remember the 1982 Sugar Bowl, when the ATla paper reported Penn State “trash talking ” on the streets at the Dawg players. Cannot recall if it was racial or just “hillbilly” type stuff. This is class?
Or his foul mouth in a couple of reported instances in recent years.
Or his recruiting in recent years , with some troubled athletes, like everyone else.How would you like to be a graduating senior, working hard on a degree and not playing much, and have to spend 7 Sundays cleaning the arena because the coach recruited some out of control thugs?
Is Paterno great, as both a coach and a person? Yes probably so.Mr. Butka mad the best comment of all. Dean Smith donated $$$ to eht UNC library. My point is this: he is not perfect, he is not a saint. There have been issues before, but nothing like most coaches have had.
I am a southerner. I choose the Bear, and I put our Coach Dooley in the top category, along with Woody Hayes ( he taught vocabulary classes to his incoming freshmen), Coach Bowden, along with Paterno.
This is what makes college football fun- loyalty. We can disagree without acting like the thugs at any school
By Paterno Splatsterno
June 2, 2007 1:30 PM | Link to this
Yeah, Joe’s perfect alright. When a Division 1-AA coach had the nerve to call Joe on a cheap late TD pass against the overmatched team a few years ago, Paterno cussed him out.
He ain’t God. He’s as old, but still not God.
By Matthew At The SLC
June 2, 2007 1:52 PM | Link to this
Joe Paterno is a class act and a college football icon. There is one man though that often gets ignored but deserves more credit. He is a wonderful man, full of character, and an awesome football coach. He doesn’t just make football players but builds them into men. He is not just a coach but also a father figure and a mentor. He builds winners on the field and off. This man is the great Chan Gailey.
By Anna M
June 2, 2007 2:25 PM | Link to this
Some of you are offering critical comments about Coach Paterno, who has been a hero of mine for a long time. The test of this man is in his longevity. It’s easy for a man or woman to gain fame and respect in a few years but much more difficult to maintain that respect over the long haul. Joe has gained worldwide respect and has kept it over a period of almost 60 years in the coaching profession. That’s a real accomplishment in my book and the true test to his character.
By AG
June 2, 2007 2:27 PM | Link to this
A few points.
Joe will be the first to say he isn’t perfect, that he has an ego and has made mistakes in the past.
That D1-AA team was Rutgers but the mistake is understandable. Joe cussed him out because they knew each other very well and he knew better than to accuse Joe of calling that play. It was an audible by the now WR coach, Mike McQueary.
I expect responders to this article to pick the Bear over Joe. Nothing wrong with than. You’re entitled to your opinion and you might be right. Joe has also held Coach Dodd in the highest regard.
I would suggest leaving Saint Bobby off the list however.
One other reason for the punishment not reported in this article was for the lack of leadership shown. This is a shot across the bow of the seniors, many who don’t play much. This event would not have happened if senior leaders stepped in.
By Paterno Splatsterno
June 2, 2007 2:59 PM | Link to this
Yeah Anna, he’s a great coach. No argument there, but none of us are perfect. So, are you hot?
By Walter Payton
June 2, 2007 3:09 PM | Link to this
OK, so Teri Moore has posted another item, and again no comments allowed. Has the AJC ever listed any criteria on what it will allow comment on and what it won’t? Moore is rarely exposed. Cynthia Tucker and Jay Bookwoman are almost never exposed. Are they being protected from the nuts because of their race and sexual orientation? Will anyone ever explain?
By Leroy Rogers
June 2, 2007 3:13 PM | Link to this
It is hard for me to believe all the statements re: Joe-Pa and the military not mentioned! It seems readers today are still wet behind the ears! At basic training, {I was drafted as one of President Truman’s policemen to go to Korea} at Ft. Jackson, S. C. and right away we learned the military was to punish the whole barracks’ occupants…I think this helped keep the goof offs in line. One guy just would not bathe, and continued to get our barracks grounded, so some of the guys took him into a COLD shower with a scrub brush and got too rough, in fact, a fight insued and a broken collar bone was one result by a big guy trying to defend the “stinking” recruit. To the writer who referred to Joe or any athlete for that matter, as a hero, is the most misused word of our day. Heroes are those putting their LIVES on the line for others, whether it be the military, law enforcement, or fireman. So think carefully before using the word “hero” in athletics. PFC…7th U.S. Cavalry, Korea ‘51’53 P.S. I don’t think Phat Phil Fulmer at UT wants any of Joe-Pa any time soon again.
By Wrecker1
June 2, 2007 3:35 PM | Link to this
Gary T. are you talking about that drunken Bear from Alabama? Oh yeah I’d put him right there with Paterno and Dodd. Then of course you throw in Dooley and Bobby B. who graduated from the same school on disciplining players!! Great choices there. Dooley and Bowden don’t even come close to recruiting the same type of student/athlete that Paterno does. You did get a pretty good one with Hayes though. I’ve always felt he was interested in his players for more than football but one does have to question the example he set with many of his sideline antics.
By mark
June 2, 2007 5:18 PM | Link to this
Great article Mr. Bishor!
By Dan H
June 2, 2007 8:43 PM | Link to this
Hey Gary T. maybe you should go read up on Anthony Scirrotto a little bit more. To call him an out of control thug is way off. He grew up in suburban South Jersey.
By shane
June 2, 2007 10:13 PM | Link to this
dooley,joe papa,and bobby bowden are close friends,if i had a son,i would hae been proud for him to have played for any of these gentlemen,as would anyone in his right mind.hopefully,he would have been a dawg.
By Too Tall Paul
June 3, 2007 2:04 AM | Link to this
Nobody is saying Joe is perfect or God, just far and away the best current example of the way things used to be done. Why is it when someone is praised anymore, that shallow people have to come out of the woodwork and point out a good mans flaws and prove “He isn’t God”. These people should hold themselves to the same standard they hold other people to.
By Gunther
June 3, 2007 3:36 AM | Link to this
He used “such dudes” in a sentence.
By Al Roker
June 3, 2007 12:16 PM | Link to this
We are looking at the end of an era here folks. Could you imagine any other Division 1 coach laying down such a punishment? I applaud Joe for his actions.
Love him or hate him, enjoy this kind of stuff now; Joe’s retirement will be the closing chapter on the book of old school greats like Hayes, Bear, etc.
By gobucks2006
June 3, 2007 1:40 PM | Link to this
I applaud JoPa for doing this. I was at last years Ohio State - Penn State game sitting one section over from the PSU student cheering section and I mean to tell you they were the most vile people I’ve ever heard at a football game. A couple of them were actually tossed out of the stadium at halftime. Perhaps in addition to Jo Pa perhaps members of this student cheering club could also clean up the stadium. As an aside don’t be surprised if PSU make a good run to the BCS game this year.