Paterno Put His Penn State Money Above Disclosure of Child Abuse

Joe Paterno sat in his kitchen one morning in March 2002 as a graduate assistant described a locker-room shower encounter he saw between a boy and a longtime friend and colleague of Penn State University’s football coach. Paterno slumped in his chair, “shocked and saddened,” according to court testimony.

Mike McQueary’s words couldn’t have come at a worse time. Paterno was trying to fix the Nittany Lions’ money-making football program he built on a motto of “success with honor,” after the low point of his coaching career. The State College, Pennsylvania, university was near the end of a $1.4 billion fundraising campaign, was six years removed from the opening of a $55 million basketball arena and had just expanded the football stadium to the nation’s second-biggest.