Buzz Bissinger: Joe should have retired long ago, when his rep was enviable

JOE PATERNO's death is no more or less tragic than any other death. All dying is sorrow. People should remember Paterno any way they choose, with prayers or love or tears or, yes, continued anger.

We shouldn't forget the former Penn State football coach's highlights, but we shouldn't turn him into a martyr either. He should not be made into a victim because of the circumstances of his dismissal by the university board of trustees on Nov. 9.

He should be remembered for what he did, his success as a football coach on the field in which he won 409 games, the most in history; his far more impressive record off the field, in which, according to a recent study, 80 percent of his players graduated within six years; his multimillion-dollar donation to the Penn State library system; his undying love for the school.

But he also must be remembered for what he did not do, which wasn't losing to Ohio State or Michigan or Wisconsin, but the willful inaction that by all accounts helped to aid and abet an alleged sexual predator named Jerry Sandusky, who once had been his defensive coach.

It is how I will remember him the most. Maybe it is because the scandal unfolded so soon before his death. Or maybe because it was such a failure of responsibility. At the moment in his life in which Joe Paterno should have done the most, given his impeccable reputation for morality, he did the least.

The last interview he gave, eight days before he died, to Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, only further confirmed his keen desire to distance himself from the horror of what then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary told him in March 2002. McQueary said he'd seen Sandusky and a 10-year-old boy both naked in a shower stall of the Penn State practice facility doing something of a sexual nature. (McQueary later described the act to a state grand jury as Sandusky raping the child.) "I didn't know exactly how to handle it . . . " Paterno told Jenkins. "So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn't work out that way."

The focus at Penn State should be on how the alleged sexual acts of Sandusky, charged with more than 50 counts of sexual abuse of minors, were allowed to continue despite repeated signs. The firing of Paterno, and his death, should not detract from that.