DON'T PANIC ABOUT THAT WIND

To all of you In Pennsylvania who are experiencing the sudden gust of wind - DO NOT PANIC!

It is just the reaction of the news media to the announcement of Joe Paterno's death this week.

It's called " back pedalling" and is temporary, at best. That is those members of the media who raced to turn the Sandusky affair into the Paterno affair.

It is not exclusive to the media, however.

It also includes the many politicians in Pa. who stood united in their criticism of what they saw as Paterno's inaction.

They criticized him for not going the extra mile(But, Lordy, Lordy surely not the "second mile"). Upon hearing the news of his demise they immediately suggested all flags in Pennsylvania should hang at half mast.

Hey, better to do it with flags than old Italian football coaches.

The guilty also include the Board of Regents (whatever the hell that is) who are the ones now in a panic. Big decisions to be made here after their impersonal use of a terse phone call in firing their head coach with the 409 wins.

"What to do?", they ask themself as they search for any leader amongst them who might possibly possess an ounce of common sense?

Another statue? If so, obviously it will not be one with a child sitting on his knee.

And, that's a shame - because it would have meant that by doing so this guy who turned a lot of children into men (the right way) during his many years at the helm of his football team might possibly erase the latent image of the man the Regents left by their kneejerk reaction in mis-addressing the whole mess.

And, make no mistake - it was His football team.

It seems the current rage - closely attached to the tail winds Pennsylvania and the country as a whole are experiencing - is to solicit signatures on-line to change the name of the football stadium from "Beaver" to "Paterno".

Interesting switch. One builds dams for a living - the other made damn sure his "extended family of children" graduated and ironically understood that there was more to life than just football.

The eulogies continue. Perhaps only Gene Collier, a Pittsburgh Post Gazette sports writer and a frequent Paterno critic, did the best job of summing things up - by honoring him for just being the man he was - with flaws like all of us. I agree.

An excerpt from the eulogy in the USA Today was typical of the naysayers:

"Time and multiple investigations, will tell whether Paterno was as naive as he portrayed himself in his last interview (with Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post) in which he said he was unfamiliar with male rape and past accusations against Sandusky."

Perhaps Paterno was too busy with that famous nose of his stuck deep in a playbook or perhaps a novel titled "The Best of Shelly, Keats, and Byron" to have paused from his reading, wander over to the TV and watch a few moments of the movie "Deliverance", or maybe switch to an Elmore Leonard mystery.

Not sure which is worse; those who followed poet Alexander Pope's use of the expression "damn him with faint praise" or those who now suddenly turn as if caught in a whirlwind and back pedal quickly as they go full speed into a cover up attempt.

It is the latter group whose pictures can be found in the latest edition of Websters under the definition of "obsequious" or perhaps, "sycophant".

Regardless, it's hard to believe Joe wasn't ready to go. His rapid descent both reputation wise and healthwise were contrary to the way he lived and all that he seemingly represented.

To have the kind of serious surgeries he had during the past two to three years - and keep coming back- were more of what you had come to expect of the guy from Brooklyn - who also occasionally spouted poetry.

Perhaps Joe Paterno, the reader, simply opted to follow the tenets of the Serenity Prayer that preaches (in various formats): God grant me the courage to change what I can change - the serenity to accept what I cannot - and the wisdom to know the difference."

Therefore, the question I kept asking myself upon hearing of his sudden death was, "Did Joe win 409 or 410?"

Maybe time and those investigations to which USA Today referred will someday provide us with that answer as well.