Coach Joe Paterno

I have been reading a biography of the legendary helmsman of the Penn State Nittany Lions, Coach Joe Paterno.

A particularly telling episode concerns the recruitment of future NFL Hall of Famer, Jim Kelly. At the time, the Nittanys thought were very close to getting Jeff Hostetler and Dan Marino to sign on the dotted line. As the story goes, by way of inducement, Coach Paterno told young Mr. Kelly that he could play linebacker. Turning whimsical at the memory, Kelly now says that had he been foolish enough to accept Paterno's offer, "I would probably be a bartender now in East Brady, Pennsylvania."

While not denying the story, one can read between the lines and tell that Coach Paterno does not care for its re-telling, nor does he believe that it portrays him a particularly flattering light. In his defense, he states that it was unlikely that Kelly would get any playing time with the other two on the team. By switching him to linebacker, the Coach would have allowed him to still attend Penn State on scholarship and possibly follow in the school's great tradition of minting linebackers.

A second story involved a visit to Penn State University by then President Richard M. Nixon during his 1972 re-election campaign. After giving a speech on campus, Nixon went to Paterno's home for dinner. Evidently, Nixon got pretty deep into the Coach's private stock, his homemade grappa. The drunken President sought empathy from the Coach, noting that "we've both got that weasly look that we've had to contend with our whole lives."

The reader gets the impression that Coach Paterno cared for neither the President's drunkeness nor his conversation, but patiently listened out of respect for the office. The President, growing maudlin, told Paterno of a bad experience he had had playing football at Whittier College. It involved a cruel prank, not uncommon when young men seek to cull the herd. On the first day of practice, the upper classmen had assigned Nixon a task which would insure that he would be the last one out of the locker room. As the undersized Nixon at last came running out late for his first day of practice, he slipped on a large pile of horse feces, which the upper classman had laid at the exit of the locker room door. Henceforth, he was bestowed the nickname, "Old Shitheels" Nixon, which he was unable to shed in his four years of college.

Paterno had some sympathy for the President, sitting in an almost hypnotic trance, swirling the grappa in his glass and muttering, "Old Shitheels Nixon . . . Old Shitheels Nixon . . ." However, Paterno finally had to give the President the hint that he had "an early practice." An almost comic-tragic episode then ensued, when the President fell and broke his nose due to the effects of the strong Paterno grappa. Out of his sense of patriotic duty, Paterno made sure that word of the incident never reached the outside world. At that time, before the world went crazy, the Coach had everything wired and not so much as a single press release left Happy Valley without his say-so.