Penn State to honor Paterno Sept. 17

Penn State plans to honor the legacy of Joe Paterno on September 17 – the 50th anniversary of his debut as the university’s football coach.

The Penn State athletics website said the event will honour “Joe Paterno’s first game as the head football coach at Penn State – September 17, 1966”. Sandusky, an assistant under Paterno from 1969 to 1999, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for multiple incidents of sexual abuse of minors.

Paterno died of lung cancer in January 2012.

Yet despite the findings Freeh delivered to the university, it appears that Paterno’s 409 career wins are more important and the university will celebrate its former head coach.

As recently as this summer, meanwhile, previously unknown allegations about a direct complaint to Paterno about Sandusky’s behavior in 1976 surfaced in a civil court case.

“This is our Penn State”. Tucked away in a press release that went out Thursday afternoon was a (sort of) announcement that the university will be “commemorating” the anniversary at some point during the game vs. the Owls. Penn State alum and university trustee Anthony Lubrano is one of Paterno’s supporters who have advocated for official recognition of the anniversary from Penn State.

The statue of Paterno was removed from outside Beaver Stadium on July 22, 2012 and highly visible, university sponsored signs of him are mostly hard to find. And Penn State, we know that a certain segment of your community is populated by self-deluded apologists, but even so, this should not be that f***ing hard.

Penn State will mark the anniversary of Joe Paterno coaching his first game in Happy Valley later this month.