Paterno wept over damage to reputation, book says

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Joe Paterno sobbed while meeting with his coaches and a former player the day after he was fired from Penn State, according to an excerpt of an upcoming story on Paterno to be published in GQ magazine.

“My name,” the Hall of Fame coach was quoted in the excerpt as telling his son and quarterback coach, Jay. “I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it’s gone.”

Paterno was fired by school trustees in November amid the fallout of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. He died in January at age 85.

Paterno had granted access to journalist Joe Posnanski in 2011 to write a biography. The September issue of GQ features an exclusive excerpt, and the biography will be available in bookstores on Tuesday. The late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was fired in the fallout of the Jerry Sandusky case.

The excerpt describes the frantic period on campus after Sandusky’s arrest on Nov. 5 following a state grand jury indictment. Another of Paterno’s sons, lawyer and lobbyist Scott Paterno, was described as the first member of the family to see the potential that the grand jury report could end his father’s career.

At the time, Joe Paterno was coming off his 409th career win, which then made him Division I’s winningest coach. The NCAA last month vacated 111 of Paterno’s victories as part of sanctions against Penn State for the Sandusky scandal.

“Dad, you have to face the possibility that you will never coach another game,” Scott Paterno was quoted as telling his father after reading the grand jury report.

Joe Paterno’s relationship with the trustees began to sour after the coach rebuffed suggestions to step down in 2004 from school president Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim Curley. PAfter the scandal broke, the family hired a public relations specialist who at one point asked Penn State football communications and marketing assistant Guido D’Elia for the name of one person on the board to try to negotiate a gracious ending, according to the excerpt.

D’Elia, one of Paterno’s closest advisers, shook his head and referred to the coach’s 2004 encounter with administrators.

“The board started to turn,” D’Elia was quoted as saying. “We don’t have anybody on the board now.”