No Ordinary Joe

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AUG 31, 1998

Certainly one of the best-known coaches in college football, Paterno became an assistant at Penn State in 1950 and head coach in 1966. And he has stayed there ever since, despite offers from both colleges and professional teams. Through the years he has compiled a record of 298-77-3, but is probably more respected because of his insistence that the aim of college is primarily a college education and only secondarily a headline on the sports page, so he and his staff drive their players as hard for academic excellence as for gridiron success. Paterno no longer uses the term much, but after a couple of years as head coach he began to preach the gospel of the Grand Experiment, adding to his reputation as a friend of the intellectuals (he's a Brown graduate himself). It's difficult for an author to avoid writing a hagiography about Paterno, but O'Brien (Hesburgh), a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley, tries, although he finds few warts. The only objection is the structure of the book, which interrupted the history of the team for four chapters of analysis and details about the man and his family and then returns to the main subject in the closing chapter. It's as if O'Brien were afraid the material in that excursus would not hold reader interest.