Christine M. Flowers: Paterno doesn't belong to the media

WITH ALL due respect to the writers in the sports departments of every newspaper in Pennsylvania, including this one, Joe Paterno is not their story. They borrowed him for a few decades, making his gridiron triumphs a metaphor for their own particular interests or agendas. They dissected his strategies, his recruits, his awards, his national rankings and even his personality, to fill column space. And in these last weeks, they turned him into King Lear, the man who was too certain of his own importance and too trusting of bad characters in his retinue.

But Paterno didn't belong to them in life, and doesn't belong to them in death. His reputation is not subject to the sometimes- whispered, sometimes-thundering accusations of moral trespass. His life won't be summed up, either, by the legal experts, members of my own profession who hover like hungry carrion over the bodies of those who've been wounded by innuendo and legal posturing.

Paterno transcends all of that. The people who knew him ignored the public campaign to blame him for someone else's alleged brutality. His players - current and former - felt as if an organ had been removed from their bodies when the Penn State trustees fired the coach late one November evening. And it had been, because JoePa was the heart of Happy Valley.

The students - current and former - also rebelled at the media's depiction of a (take your pick) doddering old fool who let criminals run roughshod on campus or a venal old man who didn't care if they did. And when they raised their voices in protest at rallies and alumni meetings, the press came back and ridiculed them for missing the "bigger picture." As if you couldn't feel sorry for this man and recognize his greatness while at the same time sympathizing with victims of sexual abuse.

Most egregious to me were the alumni who seemed to resent the role that football had played at their alma mater, and used this opportunity to attack Paterno as a belated bit of payback. Some wrote letters to the editor dripping with venom. Some wrote me emails that, if they'd been letters, would have corroded my fingers with acid. And all of them presumed guilt.