Remembering Joe Paterno

The organization “Inspiration Way” is planning to light 409 candles, one for each of former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno’s pre-sanction wins, on Tuesday as part of a vigil to honor the one-year anniversary of the now-polarizing figure’s death, according to The Centre Daily. The event will be held at 7 p.m. ET in front of Inspiration Mural, a piece of art featuring images of many Penn State figures, in downtown State College.

The painter of the Inspiration Mural, Michael Pilato, is also planning to lay a brick sidewalk in front of the artwork. It will be composed of messages pertaining to Paterno. While the coach’s legacy is still being debated, Pilato is only looking for “positive” messages on the bricks.

While watching the public memorial for Joe Paterno, a family member wondered why none of the speakers were saying anything about the Jerry Sandusky tragedy that claimed the coach’s job and fouled part of his legacy. “It’s not really the crowd for that,” I said, not expecting anybody to bring it up during the event and definitely not expecting anybody to defend his actions.

The crowd approved, moving Knight to declare Paterno the “real trustee at Penn State University,” in reference to the board that fired him days after the grand jury report broke.

The coach was buried Wednesday after a day and a half of public viewings. Thousands attended either the viewings for his procession through State College, including dozens of current and former players. Paterno died Sunday morning of lung cancer, weeks after being fired for his role in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. He was 85 years old.

For more on Paterno, visit Penn State blog Black Shoe Diaries, Big Ten blog Off Tackle Empire and SB Nation Pittsburgh. For more college football, stay tuned to SB Nation’s college football news hub.

Photos from Joe Paterno’s funeral procession, which drew huge crowds in State College on Wednesday, are beginning to roll in. Mourners lined the street along the procession route, spilling over from sidewalks and into the street itself as Paterno’s casket and the lengthy train of cars crept by. It was quite the sight to behold, and the pictures capture the emotion of the day, as well as the crush of people who came out for one last glimpse of Paterno.

The following photos were taken by Ben Jones, who was staked out on a roof along the route. Here’s the procession parting the massive crowd as it heads down College Ave.

Via the New York Times’ Mark Viera, just one portion of the procession’s path:

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Via Penn State, details on the route the procession (which will be streamed online here) will take from the ceremony to the burial:

Penn State officials have previously indicated something like 1,000 mourners are expected to be in attendance. Tens of thousands were able to make it to either the Tuesday or Wednesday viewings, with a public memorial still awaiting on Thursday.

EDIT: Paterno’s Wednesday funeral itself will not be televised, but the 3 p.m. ET procession will be streamed online by WJAC-TV.

Those who aren’t able to make it to the Thursday ceremony can watch it on the Big Ten Network or online at BTN2Go.com. Some of Penn State’s other campuses are also scheduled to stream live video of the events in viewing rooms.

Players will take turns standing guard over Paterno’s casket during the entire viewing schedule. New coach Bill O’Brien, local legend Franco Harris, and Mike McQueary, the former player graduate assistant who accused Jerry Sandusky of molesting a boy in Penn State’s locker room, have all been spotted in attendance.

Thursday, the school’s basketball arena will host another public event. Demand for space at all events is expected to be high -- at one point Tuesday, someone posted a pair of tickets on eBay, which reached $90,000 before being removed, though most of that price was likely the work of someone intentionally trying to get the auction taken down as a matter of taste.

A quote from Paterno on his perspective as his end neared:

Elsewhere, he praises the show M*A*S*H and laments reading a “depressing” book by Joseph Conrad, which one would have to assume isn’t Heart of Darkness, as the Brown grad was likely already quite familiar with that one. Regarding his legacy in light of the scandal that cost him his long-time job, Paterno wished Sandusky’s victims can “find peace” and said, “it doesn’t matter what people think of me.”

The passing of former Penn St. Nittany Lions football coach Joe Paterno is expected to have no impact on the cases against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who’s accused of raping multiple young boys over the period of about a decade. But according to a New York Times report, the seven-minute testimony Paterno recorded and his testimony for the Sandusky grand jury can’t be used in future proceedings against former admins Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, who’ve been charged with perjury:

This damages the cases against Curley and Schultz, which now have to rely largely on the story of former graduate assistant Mike McQueary, whose story may have changed slightly over time. Plenty of other evidence should still be on the way against Sandusky, however, including expected testimony from multiple alleged victims.

Jay Paterno worked for the Obama campaign during the 2008 Democratic primary, and even kept a blog on Obama’s official site at one point. This was in contrast to Joe’s own politics, but everyone seems to have gotten along just fine.

For more on Paterno, visit Penn State blog Black Shoe Diaries. For more college football, stay tuned to SB Nation’s college football news hub.

Joe Paterno’s passing would’ve been the biggest story of the college football season even if not for his tragic mistake in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. He was the winningest coach in Division I history, but that’s not why his story matters so much. If we’re ignoring games that were un-won, Bobby Bowden won only 10 fewer, and that’s discounting Bowden’s non-NCAA wins. This isn’t to say Bowden won’t be remembered, but perhaps no living coach is going to inspire the same kind of John Wooden-esque tributes. (That’s leaving aside the many have-we-figured-out-whether-his-legacy-is-good-or-bad-yet stories, which have added even more volume.)

One thing we can be sure of: Joe Paterno changed the sport, his school and his region, and it’s hard to imagine any one person having as much impact on any of it as he did. Consider some of the following:

Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET, Penn State’s Pasquerilla Spiritual Center will host a 10-hour public viewing, which will continue Wednesday morning for four hours. Thursday, Penn State will hold a memorial at the campus’ Jordan Center at 2 p.m. ET. Expect all events to be very highly attended by Penn State alumni, students and fans, along with Pennsylvania community members.

Paterno’s family has requested donations be made to the Special Olympics in lieu of flowers. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has ordered the state’s flags to be flown at half-mast in remembrance of Paterno.

A pair of smoky, dim glasses hovering on the sldeline. Herschel Walker in 1982 was high-socked invincibility to a six-year-old, but he met a miserable end in the 1983 Sugar Bowl against Penn State. By the way, If you wondered whether Herschel was already being Herschel(s) in his youth, the answer is yes.

I was watching on my cousin’s floor, six years old and convinced of Walker’s invulnerability. He ran with this high-stepping ease, this casual violence. His silhouette is still the largest piece of any single tangram of athletic shape my brain recognizes. In every running back, there is some shard, some fragment of Herschel Walker. I can’t really piece together a back without putting him somewhere in the formula, and I blame living in Georgia in the 1980s for the fixation.

Erickson’s statement on Paterno:

Paterno’s family has requested donations be made to the Special Olympics in lieu of flowers.

Multiple legal experts told the Associated Press that Paterno’s death shouldn’t alter the case or cases in any major way. One said his role in the case has served as a distraction from the heart of the matter -- whether Sandusky did or didn’t abuse children -- though we’re sure he didn’t mean it’s a good thing Paterno’s no longer involved.

Considering his physical weakness in the weeks before his passing, it’s not easy to imagine Paterno being able to devote much time and energy to lengthy court proceedings even if he’d been healthy enough.

Just three months ago, Joe Paterno was JoePa, the patriarch of college football. He was going to save the ‘80s from the Sherrills and Switzers, and he humbled the ‘Canes in January 1987. He graduated players, donated millions back to the university, and gave a community a larger ethos to believe in.

He was the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year in ‘86, a lifetime achievement award as much as anything else, and had 25 years to put more good works on top of that.

Jerry Sandusky is in the news these days for all of the wrong reasons, but the former Penn State Nittany Lions assistant coach decided to issue a statement on his former head coach following the death of Joe Paterno on Sunday morning.

Sandusky is currently facing 52 criminal charges for the alleged sexual abuse of children -- charges that led to a blowup of the Penn State football program and the ousting of Paterno as head coach after he’d spent the previous 61 years coaching at the school.

The new coach said he was able to speak to Paterno over the phone once after being hired. Paterno expressed his support for O’Brien, but the two reportedly spoke mostly of their common alma mater, Brown.

O’Brien’s statement in full:

Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in major college football history, has died at the age of 85. While we must never forget the awful lessons from the past three months, it’s important to acknowledge the mark the 2007 College Football Hall of Fame inductee made on the sport, Penn State University and the lives of hundreds of players and coaches.

His 409 wins surpassed the mark posted by Grambling’s Eddie Robinson -- he’s also the only Division I-A/FBS coach to reach 400 victories. Only 10 other head coaches at any level of college football have tallied even 300 wins. During his career at Penn State, other I-A/FBS football programs made 888 head coaching changes.

Joe Paterno passed away at 9:25 a.m. ET on Sunday morning, and in the moments following the terrible news fans and news sources all over the internet responded with a massive outpouring of love and respect for the former Penn State head football coach. His death was confirmed in a statement released by his family to the Associated Press. Penn State was understandably among the first to react to the news, releasing a long statement speaking highly of the positive impact Paterno made on the State College community.

The New York Times made mention of the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal that resulted in Paterno’s dismissal in November. There is no denying how Joe Pa would become synonymous with the school itself, however.

It is an inescapable complication of human nature that the same things that give you your most positive traits, also give you your worst. The same aspects of Joe Paterno’s personality that made him such a beloved figure in State College, PA, and an admired sports figure around the world -- the same things that made him a leader of men, a wonderful coach, and someone who made a positive impact on the lives of thousands of young men and families -- also let him down. And in the end, both the positive and the negative will be part of a legacy that got infinitely more complicated, infinitely more gray, in the last three months.

Paterno was admired, in part, because he insisted on seeing the best in people. He was celebrated for walking from his house to work, with no bodyguards. He was loved for figuring out how to maximize a player’s positive traits, both physical and personal. He believed in himself and his staff, and it gave him incredible perseverance through difficult times for his program.

Joe Paterno died Sunday morning due to complications from a two-month fight with lung cancer, his family confirmed in a statement to the Associated Press. The former Penn State football coach, who won more games than anyone else in major college football history, was 85 years old. The full text of his family’s statement appears below:

Paterno is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, the former Susan Pohland, five children, and 17 grandchildren.

Late Saturday, the gathered crowd softly sang Penn State’s alma mater while swaying with their arms around each other. PennLive.com captured video of the moment:

You can hear individuals sobbing throughout, while the conclusion of the song introduces a painful, somber silence. The song’s lyrics:

Both cite sources close to the family. Jenkins’ report is especially noteworthy, as she was the last person to interview the coach before his bout with illness took its latest turn.

Throughout Saturday night, news of Paterno’s failing health spread quickly. Too quickly, at times, as an erroneous report that he’d already passed away was able to make the rounds before sons Jay and Scott took to Twitter to issue denials.