At first, it seemed like hyperbole brought on by grief. The more he talked, and the more others echoed the same sentiment, it became clear that the statement wasnt typical mourning.
Former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno passed away on Sunday. His death came just a few months after the 85-year-old was diagnosed with cancer. Mount Nittany Medical Center said he died at 9:25 a.m. of metastatic small cell carcinoma of the lung. Others arent so sure.
Not long after his family issued a statement saying Paternos loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled, various pundits and former Penn State players talked about the legendary coach. That was expected and understandable, and so were the tears and the stories about a man who was fondly remembered and highly regarded.
What came next was somewhat darker. The reasonable need to make sense of these last few monthsa horrible stretch for the Penn State community that included an ongoing child sex abuse scandal, the firing of the university president and head football coach, and the death of someone who meant as much to those who never met him as those who knew him wellsuddenly manifested itself as an opportunity to speculate about why Paterno really passed and who was ultimately to blame.
Todd Blackledge played quarterback for Paterno at Penn State. Hes a college football analyst for ESPN now, and he used that platform to vent about how his old coach was treated toward the end of his life.
Obviously I know the cancer took its toll, said Blackledge on ESPN. The treatment took its toll and had a part to play in it. His age and his frailty had a part to play in it. But I think, as much as anything else, Joe Paterno died of a broken heart. I think there were a lot of people that had a part to play in that, whether it be the board of trustees and the way they handled his situation or even the media and the way they covered everything over the last several months. I just think that that was as much a part of him dying as anything else, and that hurts my heart.
It was somewhat surreal to watch Blackledgea member of the mediago on TV to blame the media for crushing Paternos soul. The irony of his participation in the very thing he derided was lost on Blackledge, and it escaped Matt Millen, too. The former Nittany Lions linebacker, whos also a college football analyst for ESPN, appeared on the sports network mere moments after Paterno was pronounced dead. Like Blackledge, Millen said Paterno died from a broken heart.
"I just know it was killing him, Millen said about the scandal that eventually led the universitys board of trustees to fire Paterno. Almost immediately, you could see that Millen thought he might have gone too far.
Maybe that's the wrong word," Millen added quickly.
While Millen tried to qualify his remarks, others didnt bother. Former Florida State head coach Bobby Bowdenwho previously said Paterno was a little negligent for his failure to help prevent the Jerry Sandusky scandaltold the Associated Press that you can die of a heartbreak. I'm sure Joe had some heartbreak, too." Tom Osborne, longtime head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, agreed with Bowden in the same story: "the emotional turmoil of the last few weeks might have played into it."
Some local papers also floated the idea that the scandal broke Paternos heart, as did at least one national media outlet. TheDailyBeast.com, perhaps taking inventory of all those who posited the notion, quoted a doctor who said the urge to romanticize...and tidy up the story is there.
If you can die of a broken heart, Kent Sepkowitz, a doctor of infectious disease in New York, told The Daily Beast, then the extension of that is that its your faultthat you have control over when you die. By extension, if you can just be happy all the time, you can live forever. It ascribes to events over which we have no control a tremendous amount of control.
It is a human impulsethe deep desire to take ownership of your life where there is none, or to ascribe fault for events with unhappy endings. It is also, in a way, willfully self-deceptive.
I will never demean anyone's death, said Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winner who has written about the Sandusky scandal for The Daily Beast and other publications. I also am not a doctor. But I am pretty sure he died of lung cancer. We also don't know how long he had it because Joe was so tough, to his physical detriment.
It is understandable for former players to love Joe Paterno. He was special. But I wish one of them would acknowledge that when Joe needed to rise to the occasion the most, he did not but ran from the situation. It doesn't negate his legacy but it is part of it.
In a statement after Paterno passed away, his family said that he had died as he livedwhich was true insofar as Paterno spent much of his life as a symbol. At its core, maybe thats what this broken heart business is really about. For decades, Paterno was the flesh and blood version of everything that was right about Penn State and college athletics. Toward the end, when the Sandusky scandal broke, Paterno became a different kind of figurethe best-known scapegoat at an institution that failed to properly protect innocent children from being allegedly victimized by a monster. And in the moments before and after he passed away, Paterno was still far more than a former football coach. He was a man whose life meant so much to so many people that some wereand remaindesperate for his death to signify something greater than another referendum on human mortality.
E-mail John Gonzalez at jgonzalez@comcastsportsnet.com