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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. ― Unidentified courier: Hey, Joe. Inside this envelope is a phone number you need to call. See ya later.
The phone rings and is answered by an…
Unidentified Board of Trustee member: Hey, Joe. Thanks for calling. You're not the football coach anymore.
Joe Paterno: ……
Is that really how it happened? Truly sad if that's the way Joe Paterno's final five minutes as head coach played out. That after 46 years of dedication and investment ― both financial and emotional ― to Penn State, the Board of Trustees firing him over the phone is insulting.
According to an article on ESPN.com, Paterno received an envelope Wednesday evening 15 minutes before the Board of Trustees made its announcement about Paterno's termination. The letter was delivered to Paterno by an unnamed courier and contained a phone number inside for him to call.
He did so, and at least one member of the Board of Trustees informed Paterno that he was fired.
John McEnroe's famous line applies here almost as well as it did at Wimbledon in 1981: You cannot be serious.
Jim Boeheim concurs.
"Why didn't they call coach Paterno in?" Boeheim asked on the weekly AmeriCu Jim Boeheim Show Thursday. "He's only been there 60 years. And say, ‘Coach, we've decided to make this change.'
"I don't think they had the guts to do it. Then they send a messenger to say ‘call this number.' If I was the coach, I wouldn't have called any number. I would've just … in no way done that."
And Paterno shouldn't have either. He deserves better than that. The winningest coach in Division I football ― who lives less than five minutes away from campus by car ― should have received an in-home visit to tell him of his termination.
But the phone call was made by Paterno as he and the Penn State program are torn apart by a sex abuse scandal. Jerry Sandusky, a long-time defensive coordinator for Paterno who retired in 1999, is charged with a series of sexual assaults involving young boys, including the alleged rape of one boy in Penn State's football facility shower.
Paterno, however, did all that was asked of him after he was made aware of the situation by reporting the incident to then-athletic director Tim Curley.
Could he have done more? Yes. Should he have done more? Yes, Paterno will tell so. But the fact remains that no charges have been filed against him, and he fulfilled every obligation he had as the head coach of the Nittany Lions by telling his boss.
"I respect what he's done as a coach and that hasn't changed," Boeheim said on his show. "Obviously what he did as a person was not the right thing, along with a lot of other people at Penn State."
And it's what he's done as a coach that warrants him of more than a phone call, even with the surrounding scandal.
Paterno arrived in State College in 1950 as an assistant coach and never left. It's where he met his wife, Sue, in the library that currently bears their name (Paterno Library) after the couple helped raise upwards of $13 million to put toward the renovation.
He's been a study hall monitor for freshman football players. His statue welcomes fans into Beaver Stadium, which wasn't built when Paterno arrived and now seats 106,572 as a result of his success at the helm of the Nittany Lions.
There is even a class taught about Paterno ― Comm 497G: Joe Paterno, Communications & the Media.
"The way it was carried out was awful," freshman bio engineering major Paul Kucinski said. "A man who has spent almost 50 years of his life as head coach dedicated to a single institution, donated literally millions upon millions of dollars to a single place does not deserve to go like that and be fired over a phone call."
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