college called Penn State. Paterno, the Brooklyn kid through and through, reluctantly took the job to pay off some debts. He saw this as a temporary detour toward the law. At first, he despised this little hamlet in the middle of nowhere called State College (where they put celery in the spaghetti sauce), but gradually he began to appreciate its small-town charms and grew to see that he was destined to be a football coach. He stayed in State College for the rest of his life and coached football there until a terrible series of events sparked a national scandal, and then cancer killed him.
The folktale, like all folktales, oversimplifies. But that’s not the real problem. The problem is that it strips the humanity out of what really happened.
It seems likely that Paterno did not want to become a lawyer. He was almost twenty-four when he graduated from Brown. He had served in the army, he had read the classics, he had been a football star. He craved a life of excitement. He knew full well that his parents expected great things from him; this had been a persistent and overpowering theme of his young life. He had applied to law school and was accepted at Boston University. But, though he was careful not to admit it at the time, the signs pointed to a young man who was hoping for something to save him from what seemed his inevitable fate.
“It’s particularly pleasant to learn today that a young fellow named Joe Paterno will serve as an assistant backfield coach to Engle in his new post at Penn State,” Jerry Prior wrote in the Providence Bulletin in May 1950. “Joe, in order to make the move, had to shelve, temporarily, at least, a plan to enter law school. But he had hoped all along to go into coaching if he found the right opening.”
There is the key phrase: He had hoped all along . When the 1949 season ended, Engle asked Paterno as a favor to work with the quarterbacks who would replace him at Brown. He loved it. Here was a calling that spoke to his highest aspirations: teaching, pushing for perfection, making an impact on people’s lives. Here was also a calling that fed some of his more earthbound ambitions: winning, beingin charge, having the last word. Paterno said he spent those few weeks of coaching as a diversion to fill the time before law school began. But this might be his memory playing tricks. He had read the Aeneid ; it seems likely that he hoped for the Fates to step in and change the course of his life.
And the Fates came through. Rip Engle was offered the head coaching job at Penn State University. He had been offered coaching jobs at schools before, and he turned them down, but this one was different. For one, his coach and mentor Dick Harlow had played for Penn State. For another, Engle was from a small Pennsylvania town and knew the territory. But perhaps most significantly, Penn State had determined, after a long hiatus, to give full scholarships to football players. This was a chance for Engle to recruit top athletes and coach big-time football. And Engle, gloomy and modest though he might be, had ambition.
He took the job, but there was a stipulation in the offer: Engle had to keep the entire coaching staff intact. Penn State officials worried about losing the mission of college sports (which is why they had stopped giving out football scholarships in the first place). School administrators liked to think of coaches as professors, so much so that they offered their coaches tenure. They did not want coaches fired for losing games; theirs was to be a higher calling. If Engle wanted the job, and the tenure that came with it, he would have to take on the assistant coaches too.
Engle agreed but pleaded for the chance to bring in one new coach. He wanted to teach the players his own complicated version of the Winged-T offense, and none of the Penn State coaches knew it. The school granted him this request, and Engle tried to hire his first assistant coach, Gus Zitrides, but Zitrides decided to stay
The folktale, like all folktales, oversimplifies. But that’s not the real problem. The problem is that it strips the humanity out of what really happened.
It seems likely that Paterno did not want to become a lawyer. He was almost twenty-four when he graduated from Brown. He had served in the army, he had read the classics, he had been a football star. He craved a life of excitement. He knew full well that his parents expected great things from him; this had been a persistent and overpowering theme of his young life. He had applied to law school and was accepted at Boston University. But, though he was careful not to admit it at the time, the signs pointed to a young man who was hoping for something to save him from what seemed his inevitable fate.
“It’s particularly pleasant to learn today that a young fellow named Joe Paterno will serve as an assistant backfield coach to Engle in his new post at Penn State,” Jerry Prior wrote in the Providence Bulletin in May 1950. “Joe, in order to make the move, had to shelve, temporarily, at least, a plan to enter law school. But he had hoped all along to go into coaching if he found the right opening.”
There is the key phrase: He had hoped all along . When the 1949 season ended, Engle asked Paterno as a favor to work with the quarterbacks who would replace him at Brown. He loved it. Here was a calling that spoke to his highest aspirations: teaching, pushing for perfection, making an impact on people’s lives. Here was also a calling that fed some of his more earthbound ambitions: winning, beingin charge, having the last word. Paterno said he spent those few weeks of coaching as a diversion to fill the time before law school began. But this might be his memory playing tricks. He had read the Aeneid ; it seems likely that he hoped for the Fates to step in and change the course of his life.
And the Fates came through. Rip Engle was offered the head coaching job at Penn State University. He had been offered coaching jobs at schools before, and he turned them down, but this one was different. For one, his coach and mentor Dick Harlow had played for Penn State. For another, Engle was from a small Pennsylvania town and knew the territory. But perhaps most significantly, Penn State had determined, after a long hiatus, to give full scholarships to football players. This was a chance for Engle to recruit top athletes and coach big-time football. And Engle, gloomy and modest though he might be, had ambition.
He took the job, but there was a stipulation in the offer: Engle had to keep the entire coaching staff intact. Penn State officials worried about losing the mission of college sports (which is why they had stopped giving out football scholarships in the first place). School administrators liked to think of coaches as professors, so much so that they offered their coaches tenure. They did not want coaches fired for losing games; theirs was to be a higher calling. If Engle wanted the job, and the tenure that came with it, he would have to take on the assistant coaches too.
Engle agreed but pleaded for the chance to bring in one new coach. He wanted to teach the players his own complicated version of the Winged-T offense, and none of the Penn State coaches knew it. The school granted him this request, and Engle tried to hire his first assistant coach, Gus Zitrides, but Zitrides decided to stay
Similar Books
