Just Saying, Is All... | The Best Reason To Root for Joe Paterno

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Half of success is showing up. The other half is sticking around.

Joe Paterno is a doddering coot. He’s also a deathless icon. After several millennia at Penn State, Paterno is so far over the hill he can’t remember having ever reached the summit—which would be worse news if the journey itself weren’t so worthy of our respect.

Glory means blooming while you can.

Greatness, on the other hand, means withering when you must.

I won’t pretend to be a Paterno apostle. There’s a fine line between seniority and senility, and JoePa is an adult diaper joke waiting to happen. But occasional incontinence doesn’t diminish decades of dependability. In a game where clock management wins championships, you’ve got to admire a coach who’s so determined to make every minute count.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Existence is wasted on the extant.

If there’s a moral to Paterno’s story, it’s simply that longevity ought to be celebrated as an end in itself.

College football fans fixate on freshness. New recruits, new playbooks, new uniforms—we want the future and we want it now, because the season’s too short to wait until next Saturday. The irony, of course, is that the most effective innovators are those who manage to postpone their own expiration dates. Critics will argue that Paterno has outlived his usefulness. I’d counter that outliving one’s usefulness is the hallmark of a well-pursued career.

It’s good to go out on top.

It’s better to hang on at the bottom.

Paterno is certainly past his prime, but at least his haters can still heckle him in the present tense.

Vital signs are undervalued. To age is inevitable; to abide is a gift. The best reason to root for Joe Paterno is that he’s here to be rooted for, in defiance of decline and decay and all the other indecent destinies of mankind. Every earthly wanderer knows where he’s going. The one limping on his second pair of hips should be forgiven if he chooses to take his sweet damned time in getting there.

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John Milton never won a Big Ten title in his 80s, but he did know a thing or two about the merits of resilience :

For who would lose, 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through Happy Valley,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated retirement,
Devoid of sense and motion?

Which is a pertinent question for an impermanent species.

Because survival is the first and final goal of the human race, and any mortal who scoffs at mere endurance is either sitting in the Michigan section or only just saying, is all...

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