Penn State Honoring Joe Paterno Is a Disgrace

There are moments when an institution tells you exactly what it values. Penn State just had one of those moments, and what it chose to say is disgraceful.

Penn State has opened the Paterno Family Football Experience Room inside Beaver Stadium, a permanent exhibit celebrating the history of its football program while prominently restoring the Paterno name to that history. The room includes Joe Paterno’s original office desk and workspace, personal artifacts and a timeline documenting his decades with Penn State football. Fifteen years after his career ended amid the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal, Penn State has apparently decided enough time has passed to begin polishing the Paterno legacy again.

It has not.

Nobody needs to pretend Joe Paterno was not an enormously important figure in college football history. He coached Penn State for nearly half a century, won 409 games, captured national championships and became virtually synonymous with the university. His influence extended far beyond football, and his accomplishments are part of Penn State history whether anyone likes it or not.

But documenting history and honoring someone are two very different things.

Penn State absolutely should teach future generations about Paterno. Put him in the museum. Display the championships. Show the photographs. Talk about the victories, the players and the decades he spent building the program. Then tell the entire story about how it ended.

What Penn State should not do is put his family’s name on the room.

That crosses the line from remembering history into rehabilitating a legacy that should forever carry the weight of what happened under his watch.

When Penn State’s Board of Trustees explained its decision to fire Paterno, it acknowledged that he had fulfilled his legal obligation after being told in 2002 about an incident involving Sandusky and a young boy. But the Board also concluded that simply doing the minimum was not enough. It called Paterno’s response a failure of leadership.

That distinction matters.

Leadership is not about doing the minimum required by law and walking away. Leadership is about recognizing when something is terribly wrong and using every ounce of your authority to protect someone who cannot protect themselves. Few people in State College possessed more influence than Joe Paterno. He was not simply another employee. For decades, he was Penn State football. In many ways, he was Penn State.

That is precisely why the standard should have been higher.

Jerry Sandusky was ultimately convicted on 45 counts of sexual abuse involving 10 boys. Those are not footnotes to a football story. Those were children. Real children whose lives were forever affected while adults and institutions failed around them.

And that is what makes this new tribute so disturbing.

Every time Penn State attempts to rehabilitate Paterno’s image, the conversation inevitably becomes about what was taken away from Joe Paterno. His statue was removed. His coaching career ended abruptly. His reputation was destroyed. His legacy became complicated.

But why is that the tragedy we keep revisiting?

The people who deserve to remain at the center of this story are the victims.

Penn State had already made a powerful symbolic statement in 2012 when it removed Paterno’s statue from outside Beaver Stadium. The university’s president at the time described the statue as a source of division and an obstacle to healing. Removing it did not erase Paterno from history. It demonstrated that football accomplishments could not outweigh the responsibility an institution has to children and victims of abuse.

Now Penn State appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

Calling this an effort to preserve football history does not change what it represents. You do not need to name a permanent experience room after the Paterno family to teach people about Penn State football. The university could have created an extraordinary museum celebrating generations of players, coaches, championships and traditions without putting Paterno’s name above the door.

It chose to do so anyway.

Perhaps the most troubling part is the message that sends about institutional memory. Fifteen years might feel like a long time in sports. There are students walking around Penn State today who were toddlers when the scandal broke. A new generation of fans knows Paterno primarily through stories, documentaries and highlights.

That makes how Penn State presents this history even more important.

Universities are supposed to teach. They are supposed to preserve history without sanitizing it. They are supposed to demonstrate that institutional values matter even when honoring those values is uncomfortable.

Penn State had an opportunity to do exactly that.

Instead, it chose nostalgia.

Joe Paterno’s football accomplishments should never be erased. His place in Penn State history should never be erased either. But neither should the reason his career ended. You cannot celebrate the championships while treating the failure that defined his final chapter as an inconvenience that eventually expires.

Some legacies do not get repaired simply because enough years have passed.

There were children at the center of this scandal. There were adults who should have done more. Penn State itself once acknowledged that Joe Paterno was one of them.

That should matter more than 409 victories.

It should matter more than national championships.

And it certainly should matter more than putting a famous name on a room inside a football stadium.

Penn State can remember Joe Paterno.

It does not need to honor him.

The fact that the university apparently no longer understands the difference is a disgrace.