Paterno To Retire At Season’s End

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Penn State football coach Joe Paterno has decided to retire at the end of the season, saying Wednesday that the effects of a child sex abuse scandal involving former heir apparent Jerry Sandusky have been overwhelming.

“I am absolutely devastated by the developments in this case. I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief,” Paterno said in a statement released just after initial reports confirming his pending retirement.

“I have come to work every day for the last 61 years with one clear goal in mind: To serve the best interests of this university and the young men who have been entrusted to my care. I have the same goal today.

“That’s why I have decided to announce my retirement effective at the end of this season. At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can.

“This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more. My goals now are to keep my commitments to my players and staff and finish the season with dignity and determination. And then I will spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to help this university.”

Sources have told ESPN that Paterno is planning to coach the 12th-ranked Nittany Lions in Saturday’s home game — their last home game of this season — against No. 19 Nebraska.

Paterno has been besieged by criticism since Sandusky, his former defensive coordinator, was charged over the weekend with molesting eight young boys between 1994 and 2009. Athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz have been charged with failing to notify authorities after an eyewitness reported a 2002 assault.

Paterno, 84, is in the middle of his 46th season with the Nittany Lions. He’s won 409 games, a record for major college football, but now, the grandfatherly coach known as “Joe Pa,” who had painstakingly burnished a reputation for winning “the right way,” leaves the only school he’s ever coached in disgrace.

Paterno has not been accused of legal wrongdoing. But he has been assailed, in what the state police commissioner called a lapse of “moral responsibility,” for not doing more to stop Sandusky.

Paterno’s son, Scott, who has commented on his father’s situation via Twitter, tweeted Wednesday, “Finally, thanks everyone for thoughts and prayers but please, pray for the victims.”

Joe Paterno has been questioned over his apparent failure to follow up on a report of the 2002 incident, in which Sandusky allegedly sodomized a 10-year-old boy in the showers at the team’s football complex. A witness, Mike McQueary, is currently receivers coach for the team but was a graduate assistant at the time.

Paterno told Tim Curley, who has since stepped down and is charged with lying to the state grand jury investigating the case. Schultz and Graham Spanier, the university president, could follow.

But in the place known as Happy Valley, none held the same status as Paterno. And in the end, he could not withstand the backlash from a scandal that goes well beyond the everyday stories of corruption in college sports.

“If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families,” Paterno said Sunday, after the news broke, in a prepared statement. “They are in our prayers.”

The coach defended his decision to take the news to Curley. Paterno said it was obvious that the graduate student was “distraught,” but said the graduate student did not tell him about the “very specific actions” in the grand jury report.

After Paterno reported the incident to Curley, Sandusky was told to stay away from the school, but critics say the coach should have done more — tried to identify and help the alleged victim, for example, or alerted authorities.

“Here we are again,” John Salveson, former president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in an interview earlier this week. “When an institution discovers abuse of a kid, their first reaction was to protect the reputation of the institution and the perpetrator.”

Paterno’s requirement that his players not just achieve success but adhere to a moral code, that they win with honor, transcended his sport. Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke basketball coach, said in June for an ESPN special on Paterno: “Values are never compromised. That’s the bottom line.”

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.