Joe Paterno

For decades Penn State was considered special, immune from the corruption of college athletics by virtue of Joe Paterno’s high ideals, long list of victories and even longer list of graduates.

Now, to many people outside Penn State and even some insiders, that’s been exposed as an illusion.

A blistering report released Thursday found Paterno helped hush up allegations of child sex abuse against a former assistant that went back more than a decade, sacrificing the ideals he preached to protect his football program. Paterno, former FBI Director Louis Freeh said, was “an integral part of this active decision to conceal.”

“I doubt anybody could have imagined this. In eight months, he’s gone from St. Joe to something approaching the devil,” said Frank Fitzpatrick, a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and author of two books on Paterno and Penn State, including a biography last year, “Pride of the Lions.”

“The contrast between the ethical standards we always associated with Joe and the complete lack of them in how this was handled — if what the Freeh Report says is true, and I have no reason to doubt it is, to sacrifice kids for the reputation of a football program, that’s pretty despicable. I can’t imagine anything more shocking than that.”

Nike announced it was stripping Paterno’s name from the child care center at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., not even six months after founder Phil Knight drew a thunderous ovation for an impassioned defense of the major college football’s winningest coach at his memorial service. There was renewed clamor online to remove Paterno’s statue outside Beaver Stadium.

“A statue should be least of someone’s worries at this point,” Penn State’s former star linebacker LaVar Arrington said on his radio show in Washington, D.C.

“On the one hand, Joe messed up. Joe was not perfect, Joe was not God. Joe was a person, and he messed up,” Arrington said. “On the other hand, if you’re looking at everything Joe has done and all the lives he’s impacted and all the things he’s done ... that still remains as well. So how do you separate the two? I don’t know. I don’t have the answer for that one, I really don’t.”

Until last fall, Paterno symbolized all that was right about college sports. His teams won, but he didn’t sacrifice his standards to do it. Penn State’s graduation rates were impeccable, his players were as good off the field as they were on, and his financial support of the university often had nothing to do with the football program.

Even after the November arrest of Sandusky, many were hesitant to put too much blame on Paterno or let his one failing outweigh all his good deeds. But the stark horror of Freeh’s report was impossible to ignore.

Handwritten notes and emails portray Paterno as being involved in a decision by the officials not to tell child welfare authorities about a 2001 encounter, while other emails show Paterno closely followed allegations made against Sandusky in 1998.

At a news conference, Freeh called the officials’ disregard for child victims “callous and shocking.”

“We should look at (Paterno) as a willing enabler of a convicted child molester,” Brennan said. “I absolutely understand and respect the past. The games he won, the number of players he graduated, that’s a tremendous record. This supercedes all of that. ... What happened to these children because of Joe Paterno — it’s because of Jerry Sandusky first and foremost. But Joe Paterno did not stop it and he enabled it, and that’s just tragic.”

“I always thought he knew. To what extent, that was the only question,” said Brad Benson, a former Penn State offensive lineman who won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants. “I thought that anyone who didn’t think he knew was pretty naive. Joe knew pretty much everything going on there.”

Even Knight acknowledged he had been on the wrong side of the moral divide.

“Throughout Joe Paterno’s career, he strived to put young athletes in a position to succeed and win in sport but most importantly in life. Joe influenced thousands of young men to become better leaders, fathers and husbands,” Knight said in a statement. “According to the investigation, it appears Joe made missteps that led to heartbreaking consequences. I missed that Joe missed it, and I am extremely saddened on this day.”