It is the main question. As we sit here today, the answer is unknown and maybe unknowable. Before his death, Paterno expressed regret in hindsight that he did not do more than alert his athletic director after being confronted in 2002 with an eyewitness account of an alleged sexual assault committed against a young boy by his former assistant, Jerry Sandusky. But he also denied knowing anything about a campus police investigation of Sandusky for another allegation in 1998.
The cynical narrative has already been written: that Paterno knew in 1998, and that is why he forced Sandusky out of the program in 1999, and that he did the bare minimum in 2002 by passing on the information to an athletic director over whom he towered, and that everyone thereafter took their cues from the legendary coach, and that it was all designed to protect the program that Paterno had built over the last half-century.
However compelling the story, though, there is a problem. It might not be true. People say, "He had to have known," but there is no objective evidence that Paterno knew. Not yet.
And this, again, is the prayer:
That he did not know.
Let's face it, all of us who watch sports with any kind of devotion do it because we want to believe in something, be it the synergy of teamwork or the magic of destiny or the superiority of talent or the necessity of passion. You watch for the excitement of the moment, yes, but also for the hope of something more. Something greater.
Joe Paterno was supposed to be something greater. Even if some of the legend was really myth, as it almost certainly was, the idea that winning within the rules was not only a proper pursuit but an achievable goal was supposed to be Paterno, distilled down to his professional essence.
