In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.
The following is excerpted from Death Comes to Happy Valley: Penn State and the Tragic Legacy of Joe Paterno by Jonathan Mahler. Copyright (c) 2012 by Jonathan Mahler. Excerpted by permission of Byliner Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
As the 1990s wore on, and [Joe Paterno] crossed over into his seventies, the stories about him grew increasingly elegiac. As hard as it was for anyone to imagine, the Paterno era seemed as though it must be drawing to a close.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
Here's a timeline and link dump covering all the activity that took place in State College, Pa., late Wednesday night. We'll update throughout the day if the story continues to develop.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
Embattled Penn State coach Joe Paterno, whose tenure was marred by a sexual abuse scandal involving former assistant Jerry Sandusky, said in a statement Wednesday that he will retire at the end of this season.
Penn State’s Board of Trustees is still expected to meet later this week, and it could decide on a different course of action.
You can find Paterno's statement here. Grantland's Michael Weinreb, who grew up in State College, wrote on the allegations earlier this week. He appeared on SportsCenter on Tuesday to discuss the story.
From Growing Up Penn State:
I remember one Saturday morning in the autumn of my adolescence, the coach shambling along in his parka, brow furrowed, glasses shadowed in the sharp glare of the sun, black sneakers kicking at the leaves as they eddied and then parted on the asphalt path before him. I did not intend to follow him; it just happened that way, so that one moment I was headed to a football tailgate and the next moment I was trailing along behind Joe Paterno.
I walked behind him for several miles that day. Back then, in the late 1980s, it was still a routine of his to walk from his house to the stadium where he coached, slipping across the Penn State campus, past science labs and classroom buildings and parking lots occupied by stunned tailgaters who could never quite get over the fact that it was really him. Sometimes we were guilty of regarding him as more deity than man, as if he presided over us in mythological stand-up form. He was as much our own conscience as he was a football coach, and we made that pact and imbued him with that sort of power because we believed he would wield it more responsibly than any of us ever could. Maybe that was naïve, but we came of age in a place known as Happy Valley and naïveté was part of the package, and now that word isn't in our dictionaries anymore.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
The multi-talented Joe Posnanski, writer and podcaster for Sports Illustrated and SI.com, joins the podcast this week. With a book about Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, we get JoePo's take on JoePa breaking the all-time Division I record for coaching wins. Poz then weighs in on the legacy of Eddie Robinson (the previous record-holder), the impact Joe and Sue Paterno have had on State College beyond the football field, and the unlikely success of this year's Nittany Lions team.
Then we dive into World Series talk. What the hell happened with BullpenPhoneGate? Where does Game 6 rank among the most exciting games of all-time? What did August 24 Joe Posnanski think about the Cardinals' World Series chances? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that the best team, more often than not, doesn't win the World Series anymore? Finally, Joe serves up some controversial Power Rankings, breaking down his top five sporting events to cover.
His name was Dayle Tate, he was from Springfield, Va., and he looked like this:
This picture (photocopied from my decaying edition of the Penn State football media guide) was taken in 1979, which accounts for both the plaid sport coat and the Larry Wilcox coiffure. Heading into that season, Tate was the de facto starting quarterback for the Nittany Lions, who came six inches and an Alabama linebacker from winning a national championship the year before. Dayle Tate was a god-fearing young man who dreamed of becoming a preacher, and it was through him that I had my first intimate experience with the allure of the backup quarterback.
When I was a kid, before I knew any better, I rooted for Notre Dame football. You can blame the influence of my stepfather or my Catholic roots or the musty old books I found in the school library, with their whitewashed tales of Knute Rockne. It certainly didn't hurt that starting in 1991, every Irish home game was on television. In any case, one of the greatest moments of my young life came in 1993, when Notre Dame beat Charlie Ward and no. 1 Florida State 31-24 in the second-to-last game of the season. All that remained was to knock off Boston College at home, and the Irish would have a shot at a national championship.
But things didn't go as planned. The Eagles jumped out fast and held their ground. It took a furious 22-point, fourth-quarter comeback for Notre Dame to reclaim a slim lead near the end, but David Gordon, BC's left-footed kicker, found himself lining up a 41-yard attempt with seconds left to pull off a stunner. The kick wobbled, and appeared to be heading right. I still remember the tiny swell of hope as I let my mind map out the ball's trajectory. It would veer wide, wouldn't it?
No. Gordon had done his worst.
A year or two later, I realized there was no good reason for me to support Notre Dame. In college football terms, I became a man without a country. That's continued to present day, and it's actually quite a nice break from the usual stress of affiliation. But the melodic strains of those two weeks in 1993 have persisted, reemerging from time to time in my personal sports landscape. Ward played 10 seasons for my New York Knicks, including the ill-fated 1999 trip to the NBA Finals. After his starring role in my personal sports tragedy, Boston College coach Tom Coughlin later balanced his karmic output in one of my greatest triumphs — a New York Giants Super Bowl win against the hated, undefeated Patriots. And 17 years to the day after his kick, David Gordon married my elderly Aunt Gloria.
Just kidding on that last one. Nevertheless, the connection lingers. That's the origin story, and this is Gordon's Left Foot.
On to the Week 2 features!
