Free The Lion in Autumn by Frank Fitzpatrick Page A

worry about the bridge going up. They don’t have to worry about the tunnel being crowded. I mean, it’s a great place to live.”
    He liked the players and the students too. In 1966, when the fires of social activism ignited many other campuses, student-government president Robert Katzenstein described the typical Penn State student as “passive, conscientious, law abiding, and [socially] ultraconservative.” Paterno had his own description. “They weren’t snooty like at Brown,” he said.
    Apparently forgetting his own initial misgivings, Paterno frequently scolded players who complained there was nothing to do in the remote mountain borough.
    â€œNothing to do?” he would begin, making an argument that probably didn’t sway too many coal-region linebackers. “I suppose there was nothing for the Romantic poets to do in the Lake Country of England either?”
    Married and with a growing family, Paterno desperately craved a head-coaching job. He had turned down offers to become an NFL assistant, but in 1962 interviewed for the head position at Yale. Yale approached him again in 1964, by which time Paterno had become “assistant head coach” to Engle. This time the Ivy League school made him an offer.
    He decided to stay at Penn State because Engle, then sixty, informed him he’d be retiring soon, and university administrators assured him he’d be given every opportunity to succeed his longtime boss.
    After the Nittany Lions finished 5–5 in 1965, Engle stepped down and Paterno, offered $20,000 a year, took over at last.

CHAPTER 3
    SPRING PRACTICE concluded with the 2004 Blue-White scrimmage on April 24, an azure-blue Saturday in State College.
    Perched in a booth high above the Beaver Stadium field, like some football god bemusedly observing his creation, Paterno was analyzing the scrimmage’s action for the university’s radio network. The headphones that comically engulfed much of his head were larger and provided more padding than some of the old leather helmets he had worn as a quarterback at Brooklyn Prep. Dressed in his standard game-day uniform of a blue blazer, blue oxford shirt, brightly colored tie, and khaki slacks, Paterno looked relaxed. After today’s game, his one period of relative calm was about to begin.
    Summer workouts wouldn’t start until August. He could squeeze in a few weeks with the family in Avalon. The only real demands the coach had this summer, beyond his usual fretting and obsessive preparations, were the frequent trips in a university jet to schmooze with donors, alums, and recruits and a few speaking appearances at football camps.
    While it remained large in the eyes of fans and the media, the dreadful 2003 season had receded farther and farther into Paterno’s seldom-used rearview mirror. A new cycle of football loomed, one filled, if not with spectacular promise, at least with a little of the old optimism.
    â€œWe’re going to be OK. I don’t think we’re gonna be a great team,” he said in what was an almost annual refrain. “Not this year. Maybe in two years. But we’ll be OK.”
    Paterno had ascended to the stadium’s radio booth after the lengthy news conference that always preceded this annual scrimmage.
    â€œGod almighty, all you guys here for a spring practice,” he said after taking his seat in a room packed with reporters. “I’m flabbergasted. I guess sometimes I forget how much interest there is in Penn State football.”
    It quickly became clear that football wasn’t the media’s primary interest on this day. The Penn State press corps’s relationship with the coach had changed, soured in fact, during the unprecedented spate of trouble in 2003. Now, the sportswriters wanted to know what steps Paterno would be taking in the future to prevent these off-the-field embarrassments from reoccurring.
    â€œCan’t we just talk about