Paterno
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
From America’s premier sportswriter, the definitive, #1 New York Times bestselling biography of Joe Paterno and the story of America’s love affair with football.
Joe Paterno believed that football was a way to teach young men how to live. He coached at Penn State for 62 years. In the course of his years as a head coach, his teams won 409 games, a Division I record. At the end of his life, more than 100 of those wins were invalidated by the NCAA because of the crimes of a longtime assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, and Paterno’s alleged knowledge of those crimes—knowledge Paterno denied until his death. In the process, the name Paterno—the name he had spent a lifetime building—came to represent scandal and controversy.
Joe Posnanski lived in State College, Pennsylvania, through the turbulent final months of Paterno’s life and was with him and his family as the scandal that eventually consumed him unfolded. Now with a new afterword, Posnanski’s book delves deep into the life of Joe Paterno, going back to his childhood days in Brooklyn and his college days at Brown, and looks at him through the eyes of the young men he coached. It is a portrait that goes beyond the daily headlines and into the life of a stubborn idealist, a teacher, and a flawed but principled man who, to the very end, loved to coach.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Between bouts of coughing and wheezing, the late Joe Paterno told Sports Illustrated senior writer Posnanski (The Soul of Baseball), "You picked a hell of a time to write about a football coach." Indeed, the author had relocated to State College, Penn., in 2011 and was given prime access to write what was intended to be the definitive biography of this driven man. But by year's end, JoePa's legacy was overshadowed by a horrific child sexual abuse scandal involving former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky a man Paterno never liked. The head coach was subsequently fired, and died a few months later. But Posnanski doesn't dwell on that last tumultuous year he gives the man's life its full due: Paterno served in the Army, played football at Brown University, was named Penn State's head coach in 1966 (a deal sealed with a handshake), and went on to become one of the all-time winningest football coaches. He was praised by the press, became a fundraising dynamo, and made sure his players received a good education for Paterno, college football was about "Teaching young men how to live." After the scandal broke and shortly before he died, Paterno implored Posnanski an accomplished writer with an unenviable task to "write the truth." The author's straightforward treatment of the case might be the focus for contemporary readers, but his fair assessment of Paterno's life and illustrious career will stand the test of time. Photos.
