And that is only the beginning of the testimonies for Joe that will continue to swell all around the country.

When the hundreds of thousands of Penn State alumni hear the name JoePa, they think of moral leadership, of the kind of person they aspire to be. Of his warmth, his fatherliness, his steadiness, and his granite character. Joe Paterno was for hundreds of thousands of alumni the very model of the moral ideal of Western humanism. [Emphasis added]

I’m not exactly sure what that last sentence means, but I’m guessing Michael Novak thinks he’s a good dude. There’s more:

Then, quite suddenly in November 2011, with a huge national scandal erupting, the board suddenly acted as if the burden were on them. They did not weigh their own responsibility, their own inaction, their own failure to get to the bottom of the scandal of five months earlier. In a fit of what to many alumni seems to have been fear for themselves, the board’s members ducked their own responsibility, and in the most ignoble and impersonal way, made JoePa, the moral giant of Penn State, a moral outcast. [Emphasis added]

And more:

What rot — without a hearing, without talking to him man to man, without mentioning the honor and glory and unparalleled service JoePa had given to Penn State, bringing it to such great national eminence, including moral eminence. They dumped, as if in disgrace, an 85-year-old moral giant. JoePa raised the moral tone not only of Penn State, but of the whole, huge American college-football world. [Emphasis added]

There’s even more, but I think you get the point. Novak thinks Paterno is a moral giant. Well, maybe just one more:

There are not many coaches in America who read Virgil in Latin (and used to teach it), and who understand more deeply the ethical traditions of the West, both secular and religious, and who have proven so adept at teaching these codes to raw young football players, changing them for life and winning their undying loyalty. Ask Franco Harris. Ask hundreds of others.

Penn State faithful are no doubt in a state of shock. The Jerry Sandusky scandal has rocked the university to its core, and, on top of that, their iconic coach is not only sidelined, but now he’s dead. So, it’s not unexpected for their emotions to be high and their responses over the top. I think Novak’s qualifies as over the top.

It’s one thing to be a legendary coach who has been at a school for years, won more games than anyone else and has run a clean program. It’s quite another to be labeled the “model of the moral ideal of Western humanism.” Joe Paterno was a good coach, but not that good.

Time will eventually tell how the Sandusky scandal will effect Paterno’s legacy. Sandusky will be tried and I’m sure Penn State will be investigated in a variety of ways. Maybe after these things conclude Paterno’s legacy can be fairly judged.
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If you’re like me, you celebrate by getting back to work and trying to catch up because you spent the previous 44 days consumed with the holidays and the BCS title game.

Some will get fired up with recruiting, but that’s just not me.  I take a peek here and there, but I really don’t want to spend any emotional energy over what some 18 year old high school senior is going to do or not do.  (Of course, Coach Saban takes away a lot of the worry.)

One thing you don’t do, is tear the season apart looking for what went wrong because, duh, you won a national championship, so something must’ve gone right.  And to be honest, that does makes blogging a bit tougher.

But at some point, we must start looking back to see what went right and wrong and we have to look ahead to see what the next version of our team may look like.  I guess today is that time for me.

Before the 2011 season, I took a look at four areas that I thought were key for the season:

• Quarterback
• Offensive Line
• Receiver
• Defense

Now these weren’t necessarily areas of weakness – we knew the defense would be good, for example, but I felt the performance of the team in these areas would determine whether it was a good or great season.

The biggest area is missed, obviously, was special teams.  We returned the same punter and same two kickers, so I thought the performance would be on par with 2010. But boy, was I wrong.

But I think the other questions were pretty much spot on.  Tight ends, running backs and each of the defensive position groupings played at least as well as they did in 2010.

So as we turn our attention to 2012, I’ll begin to take a look back at these areas and see how we really did.  If you have any thoughts on these areas, or others, I’d love to read them.

While Auburn should be cleaning up in this recruiting cycle as the result of their 2010 BCS Title, to put it bluntly, they’re not.  Here’s a few of the excuses reasons for that:

* They say, in recruiting, there are often delayed reactions. A national championship is more likely to have an impact the year after it is won than the year in which it has won. But, in Auburn’s case, I wonder if the negativity that followed the Tigers throughout their run to the title and really into last season didn’t have just as much impact, or even more, than winning the national championship.

* I don’t believe the delay in naming new coordinators, in itself, had a lot of negative impact. But some opposing recruiters used that along with Mike Dyer’s departure, four players being charged with armed robbery, lopsided losses in big games and whatever else they could find or create to paint a picture of a program on shaky ground. It wasn’t an accurate picture, but it doesn’t have to be. We’re talking 17- and 18-year-olds here.

* Auburn coaches have sold the availability of immediate playing time in previous recruiting years. That’s not as easy to sell this time around.

Those are good, but this one is the absolute best:

* I believe many, maybe most, players, even those who play the game until the very end, know where they want to go from the outset. More of those players will want to go to Auburn in some years than others. There’s nothing any coach can do to make a prospect go to Auburn who doesn’t want to go to Auburn.

Unless you totally don’t follow college football, you have to know what a train-wreck-waiting-to-happen Auburn’s been over the last year or so, right?  I mean, it’s not like opposing recruiters have had to work that hard to convince a 17 or 18 year old about this.

The questions will revolve around who he’s going to throw the ball to with Alabama’s top four pass-catchers from a year ago gone.

Kevin Norwood and Kenny Bell will both be juniors next season, and Norwood, in particular, made a strong case in the national championship game that he can be a go-to guy next season. He led the Crimson Tide with 78 receiving yards on four catches and made an acrobatic grab over LSU’s Tyrann Mathieu.

What Alabama was missing this past season was that big, physical receiver who could go over the middle and keep the chains moving on key third-down plays. Obviously, Julio Jones was that guy in the past, and he was also an explosive big-play threat.

It’s premature to think that anybody is ready to fill his shoes, but the wild card next season is Duron Carter. He wasn’t eligible to play this season and redshirted, but wowed more than once in practice with his ability to go get the football. The 6-4, 210-pound Carter figures to make an immediate impact next season as long as there are no more snags with his eligibility. This will undoubtedly be a big spring for him.

In my opinion, receiver was Bama’s weakest team position in 2011.  We missed Julio Jones and while there aren’t many receivers of his caliber running around, if we had just one that was kinda close to him, the season would’ve looked even more impressive.

Like everyone else, I was impressed with Norwood in the BCS title game, but was left to ask, “Hey, where’s that been all season?”  Bell played well at times also had a nice game against LSU in the rematch, so I’m left to think he and Norwood will be fairly solid in 2012.

With Carter, I’ll believe it when I see him on the field.  So until then, I don’t have much to say about his prospects.

DeAndrew White was also a bit of a conundrum this year, but he definitely has the potential to be a game-changer.

And though I’m loathe to start assigning superstar status to incoming freshmen who haven’t played a down, we cant forget these guys:

This signing class features three highly-rated receiver prospects, and two are already enrolled in school and will go through spring practice — Chris Black of Jacksonville, Fla., and Amari Cooper of Miami. Both are ESPNU 150 prospects and ranked among the top seven receiver prospects in the country by ESPN.

The other guy the Alabama coaches can’t wait to get on campus is Eddie Williams of Panama City, Fla. The 6-4, 210-pound Williams is ranked by ESPN as the No. 2 athlete in the country. He could play a number of different positions in college, but it sounds like receiver is where he’ll land at Alabama.

Overall, the talent level at receiver should be upgraded in 2012, though we’ll lose key experience.

I’m sure the Penn State faithful are mourning JoePa much the same way Alabama fans mourned – and in some ways still mourn, the passing of Paul Bryant.  But while Bryant’s death left Bama fans to mourn with one eye on the past and one eye on who would be the next big winner, Paterno left behind a much messier situation than who would be his successor.

Penn State fans were left to mourn a leader who’s actions apparently fell short – at least at times – versus the mantra he espoused.  They have a lot of things to reconcile and Blackshoediaries.com talks about this:

Joe Paterno is dead, and I’m still unable to reconcile anything.

How could a man accused of instilling no influence to prevent the worst kind of harm be called the most important influence in the lives of players who didn’t even like the guy?

How could a man who cared so very much about Adam Taliaferro and his tragic tale not be seen showing the same public support for child abuse victims in 2002, or at the very least after the Grand Jury report in 2008?

How could a man who suspended former running back Austin Scott the week before his (subsequently dropped) sexual assault charges not banish Sandusky from football buildings after official accusations were made?

How could a man unwilling or unable to ask Mike McQueary for more details also be investigative enough to make a pattern out of unannounced trips to his players’ classes to keep track of attendance?

How could a man be so defiantly resilient in the face of his institutional superiors in 2004, yet not have taken control of the Sandusky situation in 2002?

How could a man so well-versed and clearly in love with the classics not see a real life sickening tale staring him in the face, the lead role cast by a man he’d knowing of for decades?

There aren’t answers to any of those questions, by the way. Admitting that is not helping resolve my understanding of what just happened.

It’s frustrating. What’s more so is that there are perfectly reasonable questions — what exactly did everyone know, what exactly did everyone do, why the hell was Sandusky in the weight room this fall? — that we aren’t likely to have answers to and therefore aren’t likely to be able to judge and project upon. Or maybe the specifics don’t actually matter. Prohibition was supposed to cure all social ills rather promptly in 1919. A mandate for full information about how the institution of Penn State failed might end with just as much futility.

Either way, we’re now living in a Paternoless world where the events just are, because of the conditions that caused them. I’m concerned by the very real possibility that this is going to have to be good enough.