He was not a perfect man, but one who was an
excellent molder and motivator of young men.
Joseph Vincent Paterno was like Bryant in that
respect. Neither man was perfect, but there are thousands, perhaps hundreds of
thousands, of people that were inspired by the lessons both men taught.
Paterno died Sunday after complications from lung
cancer at 85. Until November 9, 2011 Paterno coached at Pennsylvania State
University since 1950. For context, the man who coldly told him of his
termination over the telephone was born in 1954.
Paterno spent 31,442 days on this Earth. For
all but a quarter of one percent of those days he was known as an honorable man
who tried to do things the right way.
There will be some who say he died because of a
guilty conscience in a child
sex abuse scandal that has rocked his former employer.
Others will claim he died of a broken heart because of how his career ended.
I would argue he died because his time on Earth was
complete because Paterno, like Bryant, was put here to use athletics to mold
boys into men. Both were humble men, yet idealistic about their legacies
because of their unprecedented success. Sadly, both died within 90 days of
coaching their final game.
Everyone has a coach or a teacher in
their life that has genuinely touched them. If you do not, all I can do is pity
you for missing your blessing. The lessons may not be evident immediately, but
with reflection they will become apparent. While you are at it, thank those teachers,
professors and coaches that have helped you along the way. Many of them are
monetarily underpaid, so reimburse them with compliments.
Mike Shannon was the parent of a
teammate. But to me, he was my first coach, back when I was a 4 year-old
playing in a soccer league in Sarasota where the home field has been converted
to a Par-3 golf course. I will never forget Larry Laskowski and Charles
Stockton telling me to not wallow in self-pity, but celebrate with my
teammates, after missing three extra points in a football game we won 47-6
But the most important coach in my
life was a man named Bob Rowe. He is a small man in stature, but his lessons in
kicking a football 50 yards and using football as a means to an education cast
a larger shadow.
When I had a mental block that was preventing
me from reaching my on-field potential, Coach Rowe told me “If you have done it
once, you can do it a thousand times.”
To this day, I remind myself of that comment when an obstacle appears
too conspicuous to overcome.
No one would deny Jim Tressel, Barry Switzer. Bobby Bowden and Jimmy Johnson are great football coaches. What separates those national championship winners from people like Jake Gaither, Eddie Robinson, Tom Osborne, Paterno and Bryant is that the latter group were highly successful AND used education to mold men.
"If you're not a man when you get
there, you'll be a man before you leave," former NFL linebacker LaVar Arrington
said of his Penn State experience. "Joe has his system so that you're
prepared for life. Joe trains you more mentally than physically so that nothing
will rattle you."
Ten days before Paterno’s career unceremoniously ended, I wrote a blog congratulating the champion and for taking some of the sheen off of himself to recognize others. Few people read it, which doesn’t bother me, but while people in my business were eviscerating the coach for all that he could and should have done a week later they were ignoring his humility in the limelight.
A family spokesperson told Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post one of Paterno’s final lucid thoughts to anyone outside his immediate family were used to think about others, a constant characteristic throughout his life.
“I’m happy in one sense that we called attention, throughout this state, and throughout the country probably, that this is going on,” Paterno said of the scandal that indirectly cost him his job. “It’s kind of been like a hidden thing. So maybe that’s good.”
Paterno’s life, legacy and death is
another reminder that we must all find out why we were placed here on this
earth. Through prayer, thinking, actions and occasionally failure our calling
will come to us. There is as much honor as being a maid as there is in being
the president if that is our calling.
Put more bluntly, without sanitation
workers our lives would stink.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
