Reviving the Blog: This One's For Joe...

It's been quite a while since I've posted here, and for good reason, free time has been at a premium this past few months. However, with today's news of Joe Paterno bringing home AP "Coach of the Year" honors with a phenomenal 2005 campaign that saw the Lions come within 1-second of a perfect season, I had to find time in my day to "post one for Joepa."

The time for "I told you so's" have passed. For a long-admitted Joe Paterno loyalist this past season was gratifying and fulfilling. So I will let by-gones be by-gones and no longer track down those friends, sports writers, and fair weather PSU fans who called for Joe's job when the going got tough the past few years. Instead I will take this time to pay tribute to the man, who at the ripe old age of 79, delivered Nittany Nation once again to the top of the college football mountain.

In one of my all-time favorite Joe Paterno speeches, Joepa describes a man with good character as 'someone who doesn't follow fashion but blazes his own path. Someone who has a a clear sense of who he is and where he is going.' No better words exist than those to describe Coach Joe Paterno.

So thanks Joe for being the VERY BEST EVER... Thanks for deciding to try out coaching instead of law school as your parents would have liked. Thanks for sticking it out in remote State College, PA when the big money of the NFL came calling. Thanks for having the faith to build the "grand experiment". Thanks for looking your detractors in the eye and telling them "I'm not going anywhere." Thanks for 40+ years of unbelievable memories for Penn State alumni and fans everywhere.

Thanks Joe.