Legendary Penn State Coach Joe Paterno Passes Away At 85

Legendary Penn State Coach Joe Paterno Passes Away At 85

Other than family, football was everything to Joe Paterno. "Right now, I'm not the coach. And I've got to get used to that," Paterno said after the Penn State Board of Trustees fired him at the height of a child sex abuse scandal.

Paterno, a sainted figure at Penn State for almost half a century but scarred forever by the scandal involving his one-time heir apparent, died on Sunday at age 85.

His death came just 65 days after his son Scott said his father had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Mount Nittany Medical Center said he died at 9:25 a.m. of "metastatic small cell carcinoma of the lung," an aggressive cancer that has spread from one part of the body to an unrelated area.

Friends and former colleagues believe there were other factors leading to his death.

Longtime Nebraska coach Tom Osborne said he suspected "the emotional turmoil of the last few weeks might have played into it."

The coach in major college football, Paterno roamed the Penn State sidelines for 46 seasons, his thick-rimmed glasses, windbreaker and jet-black sneakers as familiar as the Nittany Lions' blue and white uniforms.

But in the middle of his final season, the legend was shattered. Paterno was engulfed in a child sex abuse scandal when a former trusted assistant, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of molesting 10 boys over a 15-year span, sometimes in the football building.

When the scandal broke in November, Paterno said he would retire following the 2011 season. He also said he was "absolutely devastated" by the abuse case.

But the university trustees fired Paterno, effective immediately. Graham Spanier, one of the longest-serving university presidents in the nation, also was fired.

Posted by Andre Monohan on Monday January 23 2012, 11:41 AM EST. Ref: Yahoo. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0