Joe Paterno's legendary life was defined by success, ended with link to Penn State scandal

Joe Paterno, Pennsylvania's most recognizable citizen and a Hall of Fame football coach whose golden resumé was tarnished by a child sex-abuse scandal that beclouded his final days, has died at 85.

His death, 2 1/2 months after he was diagnosed with lung cancer, came as an eerie fulfillment to a prophecy he had made often in the final decades of nearly a half-century as Pennsylvania State University's head coach. When Alabama's Bear Bryant succumbed to a heart attack in 1983, just 28 days after his 1982 retirement, a shaken Mr. Paterno absorbed the lesson.

"What else would I do?" he responded whenever the subject of retirement arose. "I don't want to die. Football keeps me alive."

In what undoubtedly will be a disconcerting sight for many Penn Staters who knew no other coach, this autumn will be the first since 1950 without Mr. Paterno on the Nittany Lions' sideline.

The length of his tenure and the successes that filled it might never again be equaled in a college-football world increasingly marked by a headlong rush for financial gain, a trend Mr. Paterno both decried and mastered.

His Penn State teams won a record 409 games, 24 bowls, two national championships, and a following so large and loyal that in his last seasons the football program regularly produced annual profits exceeding $50 million.

An Ivy League graduate who made his team's motto "Success with honor," he graduated an astounding percentage of players, constantly stressed the role of academics in the college athletic experience, operated a program that was never punished by the NCAA, and donated a considerable portion of his relatively modest salary to Penn State's library.

But a career notable for its integrity and tranquillity ended suddenly in an almost unimaginable scandal.

Like a play whose three cheery, uplifting acts conclude with a bombshell horror just before the curtain falls, Paterno's noteworthy tenure ended amid accusations that he did too little to stop a former colleague from surrounding himself with and - if the sordid accusations are true - abusing boys.

In his final days, the university that he helped transform more than any other individual into a research institution that rivals the best of the nation's state schools was beset by perhaps the gravest crisis in its 156-year history.