Bernard Fernandez: Nike co-founder shows loyalty to Paterno

STATE COLLEGE - One by one, they came to the podium to praise the late Joe Paterno. There was Paterno's son, Jay, and an assortment of former players, one from each decade of JoePa's remarkable 46-year run as head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions. There also was the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, a female Paterno Fellows recipient and a one-time "mayor" of Paternoville, the temporary tent city that would spring up on campus whenever single-game student tickets for the most appealing contests went on sale.

Some of the speakers regaled a memorial-service turnout of 12,000-plus in the Bryce Jordan Center with humorous anecdotes of their own interaction with Paterno, who was 85 when he died of complications from lung cancer on Sunday. But for the most part the comments were respectful remembrances of someone who had touched their lives in some lasting and meaningful way. The Joe Paterno they described was a highly successful football coach, to be sure, but also a devoted husband, loving father and grandfather, educator, mentor, philanthropist and humanitarian who sought to make his university and the world better places, and for the most part succeeded to a degree almost beyond compare.

What was largely absent were references, direct or otherwise, to the 800-pound gorilla in the room that no one seemed to want to acknowledge: the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal that led to Paterno's shocking Nov. 9 firing by Penn State's Board of Trustees.

It was left to an unlikely speaker, Nike co-founder Phil Knight, to confront the gorilla head-on and to boot it out the door like an unwanted intruder.

Near the conclusion of his 6-minute, 43-minute address, Knight took aim at the trustees who dared to dismiss Paterno, his stinging rebuke earning the loudest, most sustained ovation of the 2 1/2-hour program.

"He gave full disclosure to his superiors, information that went up the chain to the head of the campus police [senior vice-president Gary Schultz] and the president of the school [Graham Spanier]," Knight said. "The matter was in the hands of a world-class university and a president with an outstanding national reputation.

"Whatever the details of the investigation, this much is clear to me: If there is a villain in this tragedy, it lies in that investigation, not in Joe Paterno's response."

Knight, recounting Paterno's accomplishments, asked: "Who is the real trustee at Penn State University?"