Paterno succumbs to lung cancer

Joe Paterno, who won more games than any other major college football coach, and who became the face of Pennsylvania State University and a symbol of integrity in collegiate athletics only to be fired during the 2011 season amid a child sexual-abuse scandal that reverberated throughout the nation, died Sunday.

During his 46 years as head coach, as he paced the sidelines in his thick tinted glasses, indifferent to fashion in his white athletic socks and rolled-up baggy khaki pants, Paterno seemed as much a part of the Penn State landscape as Mount Nittany, overlooking the central Pennsylvania campus known as Happy Valley.

Within days, his former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, was indicted and arrested on multiple charges of sexually abusing young boys extending back to his time on Paterno's staff.

Paterno and his wife, Sue, were major benefactors of Penn State, and during his nearly half-century as head coach, donors gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the university, helping to shape it into a major research institution, seemingly an outgrowth of his making Penn State a national brand name through its football teams.

The sexual-abuse scandal that unfolded in November received national attention beyond the sports world and brought new attention to the issue of child predators and the obligation to care for their victims and to act quickly to prevent new assaults by serial offenders.

After the accusations against Sandusky surfaced, the university's athletic director and the official who supervised the campus police were arrested on charges including perjury before a grand jury.

Paterno said he set up a meeting between the graduate assistant and the athletic director and university vice president, but evidently never followed up.