Joe Paterno's once-brilliant career will close under a dark cloud

His reputation and legacy soiled now beyond recognition, Joe Paterno announced his retirement Wednesday as Penn State's football coach. Wednesday night, the school's board of trustees announced Paterno was done as coach, effectively immediately.

The end was a day long-awaited. But it arrived under unimaginable circumstances, with alleged child sexual abuse by a top Paterno assistant and claims of inadequate responses by the university and Paterno topping national headlines, eclipsing a record that included two national titles and five unbeaten seasons.

Does it matter right now that Joe Paterno is his sport's winningest coach?

It is virtually impossible to dispute that Paterno, 84, stayed too long, several decades after retirement questions first arose. There is no talk of the "Grand Experiment" Paterno once espoused, no suggestion today that Penn State won football games while maintaining its ideals.

For so long, Paterno's legacy seemed scandal-proof: six decades at the school, head coach for more than 45 seasons, first Division I-A coach to reach 400 wins.

"Whenever Joe does retire, and when you look at all the areas involved, he'll go down as the most successful and probably the greatest coach we've ever had," retired Florida State coach Bobby Bowden once said. "All the years he's coached at one school, what he's done for academics and the character of his players and the football team has been so good for so long."

Wednesday, rival coaches talked instead of their sadness at how the tragedy that had unfolded in State College had engulfed Paterno.

Paterno's career retrospective appeared destined to include lighthearted references to a kid from Brooklyn, a Brown University graduate, showing up at Penn State thinking he was merely stopping off on the way to law school.

"It was a cemetery," Paterno joked about State College, recalling the town when he first arrived in 1950 as a 23-year-old assistant to Penn State football coach Rip Engle. "You couldn't get a drink. And the only place you could buy a plate of spaghetti was a place called the Tavern. It cost a buck, and they had celery in the sauce!"

His teams wore famously outdated uniforms, eventually adorned by a Nike swoosh. Paterno himself kept the same famous game-day look for decades, the horn-rimmed glasses, the too-short khakis and sneakers. He donated millions to Penn State and his fund-raising brought in many millions more. He remained proudly behind the technological times.