Adam Taliaferro: "Penn State has lost its heart"

FROM KEITH GROLLER

ESPN's non-stop coverage of the passing of Joe Paterno has included many insightful interviews.

Adam Taliaferro, the young man who suffered a paralyzing spinal cord injury while playing for Penn State in a 2000 game against Ohio State, talked about the tremendous support he received from Joe and Sue Paterno during his recovery and really throughout the past 11-12 years.

Taliaferro said, simply: "Penn State has lost its heart."

He vowed to do whatever he could to help restore Paterno's legacy as the grieving and mourning process begins.

Beano Cook, often an adversary of Paterno's because he worked as a sports publicist at the University of Pittsburgh before he became an analyst, told some interesting stories.

Cook said he never thought there would be a day when Paterno wasn't walking the sidelines at Beaver Stadium.

He said he first met Paterno in 1957 and the two almost got into a fistfight shortly after introductions. Pittsburgh and Penn State were both going after Mike Ditka and Paterno, then an assistant coach at PSU, exchanged some heated words with Cook. Cook said that "Iron Mike" represented the biggest recruiting loss Paterno had ever suffered. "He said that as recently as 10 years ago," Cook said.

"His legacy will be affected [by the scandal], you can't get away from that," Cook said. "But people will understand that things happen. And things got out of control. He made a mistake by not getting more involved the first time he heard about the problem. He admitted that. But I don't think it can take away from what he did for the university.

"This will be in the obituary, there's no doubt about that. It will be remembered 10 years from now. But it should not take away from his greatness. It can put a bad mark, but it does not come close to what he contributed, not only to Penn State, but to college football."

Another person who might be considered a Paterno adversary, Bobby Bowden, also had many kind things to say. Bowden, like Matt Millen and Lou Holtz earlier, said that the scandal contributed to Paterno's death just a little more than two years after it all unfolded.

"I think it definitely [contributed]," Bowden said. "It would have helped me end it. It just couldn't help his outlook. And then the sickness hit him at the same time. It was just too much for his heart.

"Everybody respected Joe. Everybody looked up to Joe. I really admired him and looked up to him. You always hear life is not fair and it's not fair. You just have to live with it. Things don't end the way you want them to end. And this is a textbook case that life isn't fair. After all that he has done for college football and Penn State University itself ... and then this dad gum thing happens. He's sitting up there in heaven listening to all of this."

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