The team was struggling at the time, being pummeled by gridiron powerhouses like UCLA and Michigan State. As our paths crossed, I asked Paterno what he thought of the plush special dorms I heard some colleges were offering football players as a recruiting tool: "Think we'll get any of those at Penn State?"
"No way, it's just a gimmick," he barked back with a dismissive wave of his hand. "What are they trying to do, turn these kids into professionals? They're just college students."
In Paterno's wholesome but increasingly passé view, the athletes were, first and foremost, students. He wanted them to be immersed in college life, not sequestered from it.
Call him a purist, a troglodyte, or someone who was just plain out of touch, but those old-fashioned principles would endear him to generations of Penn State grads and others who appreciate a strong work ethic and prefer merit over glitz. Little did I know that this relatively unknown but opinionated assistant would go on to become one of the nation's iconic sports figures.
Paterno's shockingly swift fall has been a sobering lesson for me and many others. The media firestorm over the sexual-abuse allegations against a longtime Paterno assistant also surprised me. Not because such acts don't justify moral outrage - they definitely do - but because the intense indignation contrasts with what I found while writing a book about the use of institutionalized children for medical research. Many of the former orphans I interviewed had been routinely sexually assaulted, and hardly anyone in authority or the outside world noticed.
