The Lion in Autumn by Frank Fitzpatrick

I’ll . . . ‘I didn’t catch the end of his threat because the photographer and I were hurriedly whisked away, so as not to further disturb a disturbed icon, even though we did nothing to disturb the icon in the first place.”
    According to Moore, Paterno later apologized and visited with the Little Leaguers. But the episode was another indication of the emotional investment the coach was making in the 2004 season.
    As he flew around that summer—to supporters-only dinners in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Hershey, to speaking engagements, and to football banquets in talent-rich areas of South Carolina andVirginia—Paterno heard the same questions: Mills or Robinson? Can Penn State get back on top? Are you thinking of retiring?
    He wished all those worried fans could see how well things were going, how excited he was on the eve of another season, how even the weather had been cooperating with his grand plan.
    â€œI think overall we had a good preseason,” Paterno said on August 27. “I’m a little disappointed in a couple of kids, but I think overall we did about as well as we can expect. The weather has been good. We’ve had fairly hot weather, but not that oppressive humidity or hot weather where you can’t get a lot of work done because kids just run out of steam. . . . We were able to get outside more often than we have in other years because when it rained, it rained at night and we didn’t get a lot of rain during the day.”
    For Paterno at least, the sun was shining again in Happy Valley. Even if all those critics and sportswriters were too blind to see it.
    Among all the extraneous happenings in the world he had missed that summer were Sports Illustrated ’s preseason rankings. The magazine, whose worshipful writers over the years had been greatly responsible for Paterno’s deification, had Penn State an almost unthinkable No. 50. That sobering news might have concerned the naysayers. But not Paterno. He was feeling fresh again. The kids were buying into the changes. The new staff was working out well. The Nittany Lions would surprise some people this season. And then watch out in 2005.
    All that talk he had heard about fans threatening to give up their season tickets unless Paterno was replaced was nonsense. Someday soon they were going to be the hottest tickets in college football again.
    Didn’t they realize it was Penn State football, not Paterno, that was going places?

CHAPTER 4
    WHAT YOU NOTICE FIRST about Joe Paterno is how out of place he appears in central Pennsylvania. After more than a half century in the picket-fence borough of State College, he still resembles a New Yorker who can’t find his way home.
    Penn State’s head coach is the area’s single most significant and revered resident. Centre County citizens adore him and are proud that he has settled and succeeded in their midst. Yet in many ways Paterno has never been fully assimilated into their community. In attitude, demeanor, and spirit, he remains an outsider. The thick New York accent, with its constant contractions, its dropped g ’s, and whiny assuredness, is far too clipped and urban for him ever to be mistaken as a native. A Washington Post profile a quarter century earlier decribed his voice as “full of hero sandwiches and screeching El trains.”
    Paterno’s taste in clothes—blazers, oxford shirts, understated plaids, ties on the sideline—also identify him as an interloper in a section of Pennsylvania where many consider hunting jackets fashion statements.
    His slightly hunched, corner-boy swagger further betrays his city roots. So do his interests: Literature, the opera, and Italian food are not attractions indigenous to the region. Occasionally, he’ll take note of the green, rolling hills that surround State College and remark, as if observing the landscape for a first time, “Geez, isn’t it beautiful