Ultimately if a disease is advanced enough it is likely to win despite all the courage and medical technology available. The thing that makes me believe jeopas decline was part will to live was the sudden decline in his condition.
Apparently, you get cancer. This all strikes me as incredibly presumptuous armchair psychology. Maybe the guy was fighting like a motherfucker, or just under a ton of stress that hastened the decline regardless of his will. You don't know. What you do know is that he had a highly lethal form of cancer, and cancer/chemo are a motherfucker.
It's far from presumptuous to consider the valid possibility that the stress and turmoil of losing your career and being embroiled in a massive scandal could contribute to a more rapid decline in health. I'm not saying that he was on the road to recovery and the scandal made the cancer magically redouble its efforts or anything, but completely ruling out the factor of emotional and mental well-being in the fighting of a disease would be presumptuous. Without going into the whole guilty/not-guilty debate again, I feel for his family. I hope his end was relatively painless.
Or, maybe, a radiologist noticed that he had cancer that would kill him in a few months, but when he reported it to the doctor, the doctor told the family that JoePa had a little bug. With the benefit of hindsight, the doctor wishes he had done more.
Does anyone else think that he had a actually died a while ago, but everyone just chose to keep quiet and not report it?
It wouldn't have been very presumptuous had Paterno been 47 when he died. He was 85, and had terminal cancer. Contributing factor? Maybe, but even if so it was a small one.
I find so much that is sad about this whole thing. Joe Paterno was a great coach. I have to give him his due on that count. But he totally fucked up in not doing more about the Sandusky thing. Should his entire legacy be colored by that failure? 61 years of dedication to students and the school down the drain over that one oversight? My answer: Absolutely. And it's a shame. All of it.
Dude couldn't have died at a worse time for his legacy. If he'd stayed around long enough to accept some blame/cooperate with an investigation, history could at least have him on record as trying to make up for his sins. As it stands now, he still looks like a negligent buffoon who showed no meaningful signs of remorse for his negligence, a man too stupid and too in love with himself to publicly recognize his part in the ruination of young kids' lives. Hope it's hot down there, buddy.
Am I the only one getting really creeped out by the deification of Paterno going on at Penn State? I mean yeah, family, former players, people who knew him, that's all fine to mourn the man and speak well of him. But these students and alumni who never met the man, standing out in the cold and crying as his casket passes? What in the fuck. "He was a great man." No, like most men he was flawed and layered, and for the people who knew him perhaps those many layers outweigh his gigantic glaring flaw. But for the general public, for those who support and attend a University made less safe for its most vulnerable members by his flaws? Absolutely not.
No, that creeps me out, too. The other thing that creeps me out - or at least pisses me off - is that the same media who jumped all OVER this story, called for Paterno's resignation and blamed him for covering up, or at least intentionally ignoring warning signs, is now running articles or stories about how we shouldn't overlook all the good Paterno did because of this "one little thing." (I'm looking at you, Rick Reilly.*) Fuck you. It suits me just fine if Paterno's legacy is forever remembered just like this: "Joe Parterno, long time head football coach at Penn State, is the winningest coach of all time, who enabled a child molester and allowed an environment to exist that supported child abuse." *Reilly in November 2011: "Don't feel sorry for Paterno. He's had his life. Feel sorry for these boys, because they may never get one." Reilly in January 2012: "Maybe you will never be convinced Joe Paterno was a good man who made one catastrophic mistake, but do you have time for just one story? . . . If we're so able to vividly remember the worst a man did, can't we also remember the best?"
The worship of Joe Paterno in Happy Valley was ALWAYS odd and creepy, way before Sandusky-gate even happened. I visited that campus several times in the mid to late 80s, and was baffled by all of the cardboard cutouts of "Joe Pa" in stores, fast food joints and dorm rooms, by the way the students referred to him as "Joe Pa", and the reverential way in which they spoke of the man. It was cultish at best.
I went to school there and the insular thinking and group think put me off even then. The schools priorities have been fucked for so long over this guy and the football program. It actually is a respectable research institution but the undergrad culture is just bizarre. The college culture at PSU and other Big Ten schools encourages man-child behavior, and the religious undertones of adulation were not lost on me even then. It's fucking scary and weird. All over a coach who won two championships during the carter administration. The only thing worse has got to be Notre Dame, but at least they are upfront with their religious insanity and institution's acceptance of child rape. Grown men in their 40s and 50s piling into RVs and acting like a bunch of fools each Fall to worship the football god, get wasted, and disgrace themselves. Our alma mater had the lyrics "may no act of ours bring shame..." And the student body in its stupor every gameday in the stands just mumbled "we don't know the goddamned words" for the entire song when the band played. I hope the program gets the death penalty from the NCAA, roots out all these yokels, and dramatically shrinks the size and footprint of the entire school. JoePa was cutesy, weird, and largely ineffective for the past 10 years. I wish he had lived up to the ideals he supposedly stood for as an educator, but he poisoned the whole thing. I hope the school can move on, not regress (you should hear about the whacko alumni association's efforts to recall the board of trustees), someday I hope I won't be ashamed to have PSU on my resume.