Joe Paterno guided his football teams to some pretty impressive performances. Football, we all know, is seasonal preoccupation – except in upper New England where winter isn’t just a word surrounding Christmas, and where basketball is the main focus, primarily, I suspect, because it’s not necessary to plow two feet of snow off the area between the hoops.
Football, in much of the nation, means money, and JoePa’s boys certainly made certain a healthy serving of it landed beneath the home goal posts in State College, Pa. – enough so that his final contract was $5.5 million and, one hoped, worth every penny.
JoePa’s fall from grace threatens to take the team down with him. It shouldn’t.