Sunday, January 22, 2012

What Joe Paterno Taught Me

So I have an entry that I was going to put on here tonight. It's a rather lengthy piece, enough so that I will have to split it up. That'll have to wait.

As everyone probably knows by now, Joe Paterno passed away this morning. Even if you don't follow sports, you know the Paterno story because of a louse named Jerry Sandusky. As us sports fans know, there was a lot more to Paterno - and much of that will dominate sports news in the coming days.

We'll hear about Paterno's wins. His 409th win - which would turn out to be his last - put him past Eddie Robinson and lifted him into first place all-time in that category. We'll hear about the two national titles, the second of which will forever unnerve me as a Miami fan. We may even hear about the philanthropy: Paterno and his family gave millions to Penn State. One thing that we'll definitely hear about is his forming young minds to become productive members of society and his teaching hundreds of former players. It's the teaching part that I want to focus on.