Mr. Morris,

It was a great joy to see the name of a great coach like Paterno grace the pages of a great and well respected newspaper. But upon reading your article I could only shake my head in disgust at the lack of respect and validity that your article puts forth about such a great educator like Coach Paterno. He may be a little old, but folks around Central Pennsylvania feel he has earned the right to leave when he wants to do so. You claim he received “deity-like status at Penn State” for coaching “43 seasons, win(ning) two national championships and produce(ing) five unbeaten teams.” I will not disagree with the deity-like status that he has at PSU but the man earned it by his implementation of the “Grand Experiment.” In case you do not know what that is I will be happy to fill you in. It said that a great football program could go hand in hand with great academics. Lots of college coaches will talk a big talk but how many back it up personally? Paterno opened up his pocket and donated 4 million dollars to build a library on campus to aid in that endeavor. Oh by the way he only makes $500,000 a year in salary from the University. How many coaches go out and actively fundraise after a National Championship NOT for football money, but for money to bring in the best professors in the world? Paterno did just that after the 1982 championship season. Penn State is now one of the leading research universities in the world. That was accomplished by fundraising efforts of Coach Paterno and the hard work of many others. Also the Outside the Lines segment was extremely biased and did not offer both sides of the story. ESPN came in with a predetermined agenda and as Coach Paterno said “was on a witch hunt”. Your newspaper has been running a series on “Who is Coaching Our Kids” in which the education and preporation of high school coaches has been called into question by national sources. Any coach who wants to meet the standards set forth by the NASPE needs to read about the honorable body of work both on and off the field of Paterno. I suggest “Paterno: By the Book” as a great place to start.

this article was clearly written as “flame-bait” and he wants to get the hundreds of angry e-mails from PSU and FSU fans, so he can read them and snicker to himself (besides, I don’t know if I would say anything much different than carolinaeasy did, or nearly as well).

My biggest complaint about this article is that it comes across as if it was written by a high-school or college student for their school newspaper. The story has no flow, and there are random comments interjected that break up any flow. He does a sub-par job of following up his claims with any facts or sources, though the ones he does bring up aren’t completely ridiculous.

I also don’t like his statements about each coach’s reasons for continuing coaching, since they are pure guesswork. I think he is off the mark about Paterno’s reasons. I don’t think Paterno cares much about the record, but I do agree that he would like to have it. In my opinion, I think Paterno’s reasons for sticking around the game are selfish in that he doesn’t want to give up his life, and for the past nearly 6 decades his life has been Penn State football. I’m sure every time the issue of retirement comes up he thinks about Bear Bryant, and his death a month after retirement, and he doesn’t want to face his mortality.

Of course, can you really say he needs to retire when he has one of the top teams in the country, and despite what the OTL segment said, there is still control in the program (players have been punished, issues have been dealt with). Not to mention to ridicuous claim of the OTL segment that we were purposefully recruiting players of questionable character, when the players getting in trouble had no prior issues, came from the same recruiting grounds we have always pursued, and were also pursued by other top “quality” teams.

By the way, I don’t mind his final statements. I would quite enjoy PSU winning the national championship, Paterno retiring, and Bowden being forced to retire as well, cementing JoePa as the all time wins leader, as well as someone who had undefeated seasions in five (5!!!) different decades (though four [4!!!] decades containing undefeated seasons is not too shabby, either)

there is so much going on in South Carolina regarding both major college teams. Terry Bowden is about to get fired, Spurrier is rumored to be ready to leave, and there have been numerous transgressions off the field by both teams…but this jagoff focusses on two coaches that are 600 miles away in both directions…glass houses blah blah blah…i just got a little fired up today over it.

a pretty pedestrian email: your terrible, your argument is weak, this is why journalism is dying, etc.

He’s probably still pissed that Courtney Brown went to Penn State.

But seriously, if Clemson is not the most disappointing team in college football this year, who is? And South Carolina, who are they going to hire next to max out a 6-6?

This is like asking somebody in Alaska what they think about surfing.

tell The State’s current president and publisher

Henry Haitz III, President & Publisher (hhaitz@thestate.com)

how you feel.

If you think the name is familiar, prior to being the publisher for The State, Haitz was publisher of the Brandeton Herald. Prior to holding that position, he was president and publisher of The Centre Daily Times.

I will be happy to do that.

Mr. Morris,

I am writing you from Penn State country, where your article has been met with exception by most everyone not just for criticizing our coach (one we believe to have nothing but good intentions), but doing it in a careless, unjustified, unresearched manner. You did not do your homework before writing this article and it shows especially in the following passage:

“Unfortunately, like Bowden, Paterno’s reasons for continuing to coach at age 81 are equally driven by ego. Paterno wants to retire with more wins than anyone else…”

Have you any documentation for this statement? Because Mr. Paterno would surely disagree with you, I am sure of that. My problem is not that this is your opinion, mind you, rather that you present this as fact when it IS clearly opinion, thusly misleading your readers. Does Paterno just want more wins? Does he enjoy coaching his players into NFL-caliber football machines? Does he enjoy molding young men into disciplined (no pun intended…more on that later), responsible adults with a sure life after football? Does he worry that the coach following him at Penn State may not have the best intentions in mind? Is he attempting to wait out current administration because he knows what succession plan current administration has in place and doesn’t agree with it? WHO KNOWS?! It would be foolish to speculate on the reason for Paterno to continue coaching (and BELIEVE ME, people in the State College area have been attempting this for years). All we really know for sure is what Paterno tells us: he likes it. He enjoys it. He sees no reason to get out of it. Any you know what? He’s still pretty damn good at it:
2005: 11-1.
2006: 9-4.
2007: 9-4. Bowl wins in each of the last three seasons.

Paterno is much more than just a figurehead as well. There are video clips all over the place of Paterno still running around the practice field demonstrating finer points such as hand placement, leverage, and footwork on blocking techniques, as well as numerous other things. He was quoted last week as saying the biggest disappointment from his recent sore leg is that he now needs a golf cart to get around during practice and therefore cannot sneak up on his players during drills to ensure they are working hard. These are not the actions and statements of a figurehead.

One more thing many Penn Staters take exception with: The Outside the Lines segment on Penn State. This piece provided many damning, though completely accurate, statistics about our football program and its run-ins with the law. What it did not provide, however, was any type of perspective. How many charges have been brought against other programs during this time period? What percentage of arrests were our football team involved in compared with the overall university population? How many charges were dropped? What were the punishments like? Your article states that 27 out of 46 players were convicted of charges since 2002. Is this 58.7% greater or less than the conviction rate of the average population? 45 out of 163 charges resulted in convictions. Is that 27.6% around the norm? Are football players being held to a higher standard than the overall population at Penn State? The results may surprise you.

One last thing I disagreed with about your article: its assertion that Penn State has recently recruited thugs in an attempt to “win at all costs.” This is simply not true, and if you did any type of research rather than regurgitating what you’ve seen on TV, you may have discovered this for yourself.

In the future, I hope your articles are more objective and show better research and thought. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will go back to studying in Paterno Library, where Mr. Paterno’s $4 million (and priceless vision for the future of education) will help me achieve my college degree.

That was a great letter…may I suggest fowarding it to the publisher whose email was found by Nitwitt86 above!