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College Football, Dan LeBatard, Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, Kirk Herbstreit, Northwestern, Pat Fitzgerald, Penn State
Paterno and Fitzgerald before PSU's 34-24 victory over the Wildcats in Evanston this year, now the final meeting between the two coaches.
It is a comparison that has been made over and over again since Pat Fitzgerald became the head football coach at Northwestern University. Headlines in the vein of “Is Fitz the Next Joe Pa?” have graced many a publication in the past few years. Hell, when Paterno couldn’t make it to the locker room to address his team due to a sore hip and leg when the Nittany Lions visited Evanston for Northwestern’s Homecoming a few weeks ago, he instead asked to meet Fitz’s three young sons up in the press box. The two men are inextricably linked, with many in the media trying to force Pat Fitzgerald into the Joe Paterno mold, no matter how hard he tries to stay out of it and forge his own way.
Today, Paterno released a statement announcing that he will retire at the end of the season. He might not ever get that chance. The board of trustees has yet to announce a real decision on Paterno’s future, and given the intense media scrutiny and pressure, the board may just decide to shove that resignation back in Paterno’s face along with a pink slip. The man is 84, he has no idea what the court of public opinion has decided on social media outlets. Seemingly everyone wants him to resign immediately, to not remain for even one more day at the university he gave his life to.
I’ll take a moment to throw my two cents in, just as everyone else even remotely close to caring about this situation has already done. I think about the three people I’ve known longest in my life: my younger brother, my best friend from high school and college, and a very close friend from elementary school. I’m almost 23, and to put these relationships in perspective, Paterno and Jerry Sandusky coached together and won hundreds of games, including two national titles, for more years than I can physically remember as a human being on this earth. There has to be group of current students at Penn State whose parents weren’t born when Paterno started coaching. I can’t fathom a 30-year professional relationship and friendship, but I’ll do my best to estimate.
As a writer, I imagine the hypothetical situation in which I work with my close elementary school friend at a magazine – for 30 or more years. We are integral to the success of our business and art, rise to the top of our field, whatever. Then one day, an editorial intern comes to my hypothetical office, closes the door, sits down, and tells me that he saw my friend and colleague of 30 years in a shower having intercourse with a 10-year-old. In all honestly, I can’t process that scenario. Dan LeBatard tweeted about the difficulty facing Paterno with turning a friend and co-worker in to the police earlier in the week, and I have to say I agree with him. I don’t think I would have been able to pick up the phone and immediately call the police. But a direct confrontation with the accused, though difficult, would be mandatory. I believe in my heart that I would talk to my friend about such a heinous possibility.
Perhaps a close friend isn’t the avenue to go down. I don’t know how close Paterno and Sandusky were over the years, but they did coach side by side for three decades. The Paternos do television commercials for the Special Olympics, a charity they’ve been involved with for decades, and Sandusky had his own children’s charity, The Second Mile, which in hindsight makes the accusations even harder to confront. Maybe I should imagine the scenario involving just a co-worker, in which case I’m still hopelessly out of my depth, since I’ve never worked alongside anyone for 30 years. I’m not even close to 30 years old. Kirk Herbstreit referred to what Paterno and others did as “getting it off their desk…passing it along to the next guy,” more concerned with self preservation of their own legacy and reputation than with sticking their necks out to bring a pedophile to justice. Paterno will have his 400+ wins in college football, but it will forever carry the stain of his inaction. Still, I can’t say I would’ve done anything differently, because I have no frame of reference. None of us do. 99.99999999% of us will never be in a situation even remotely close to this. So while it may make us all feel better to act morally superior and agree with the unequivocal position that was Sandusky was wrong and if we ever heard something like that, we’d go to the police immediately, I can’t help but reply that the black and white situation of sexual assault of a child in this case ignores a lot of details that muddled the situation.
Now that we know Paterno won’t be back for another year, the news focus will inevitably shift to the search for a new coach. Which brings us to Pat Fitzgerald. Even after the guy got a contract extension through 2020, there will still be rumors circulating that he’s a candidate for any high-profile midwest coaching job. Opening at Michigan? Hire Pat Fitzgerald. What about the revolving door that is Notre Dame? Hire Pat Fitzgerald. But the big one, the one that loomed the largest has always been Penn State. Fitz has been deflecting the “Next Joe Paterno” comparisons for years. I remember some time ago, perhaps on one of the Big Ten media days before the start of a season, when Fitzgerald was asked for about the thousandth time about whether or not he would be like Paterno and stay at Northwestern into his 80s. I loved his answer – that he would retire long before he got to that age, that instead he would choose an earlier retirement, spending time with his sons and having time away from football. It was the perfect answer to cement the fundamental differences between Fitzgerald and the totemic presence of Joe Paterno. Fitz is a unique coach who has had to follow in many footsteps of other coaches. Gary Barnett brought Northwestern its first football success in 50 years. Randy Walker continued it, and his sudden death thrust Pat Fitzgerald into his first head coaching job. Many at Northwestern hope it to be the only one he ever holds.
Why would anyone with as stable a position as Pat Fitzgerald ever leave his alma mater, where he is still entirely beloved, go to the largest vacuum of uncertainty in the college football landscape? Answer: it’s never going to happen. You know all that great tradition? That disappeared overnight. No self-respecting Penn State fan, nor any Northwestern fan, student, alum, anything, should consider a Fitz to Happy Valley move within the realm of possibility. The media circus that will infect the upper administration and athletic department at Penn State University won’t go away for a long time. A complete regime change is necessary, but nobody sees Fitzgerald making that leap. If he does, it’s an incredibly minuscule chance with a big buyout…forget it. It’s not even worth discussing the terms of a possible exit.
Perhaps the biggest unsung hero of the online Northwestern football community is NUHighlights, who posts extensive video highlight sequences for every Northwestern victory on YouTube under the name NUBears. The account also posts classic victories, including the ones from back when Fitz was out standout linebacker during the Rose Bowl season. One of the best highlights from that year was the home victory over Penn State on November 4, 1995. Fitz was in the midst of the first of his back-to-back Nagurski and Bednarik Award-winning seasons, but now there’s specter hanging over this highlight video, as well as countless other Penn State games. On the opposite sideline, Jerry Sandusky ran the Nittany Lion defense. All those big plays, the Darnell Autry runs, the long Dwayne Bates TD catch, and every other big play is in retrospect thwarting a despicable and perverse man planning the defensive scheme. The next time the game is replayed as a classic on BTN, that cloud will hang mercilessly in the air.
When Fitzgerald was asked to comment on the scandal at Penn State, all he wanted to say was to express his sadness. Everyone knows the respect Fitzgerald has for Paterno, from his playing days up to coaching against him at Homecoming a few weeks ago. Now, after this horrific scandal has ripped away Paterno’s legacy, I sincerely hope there is absolutely no reason for anyone to make the comparison between the coaches ever again.
