Joe Posnanski's forthcoming book about former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno certainly was strangely timed -- the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke late last year and ended up wrecking Paterno's career and his legacy. GQ will publish an excerpt from the book, and currently has selections from that excerpt available on its website.
↵Of those selections, the big one describes Paterno crying after learning he'd been fired.
↵↵↵On Thursday, Paterno met with his coaches at his house. He sobbed uncontrollably. This was his bad day. Later, one of his former captains, Brandon Short, stopped by the house. When Brandon asked, "How are you doing, Coach?" Paterno answered, "I'm okay," but the last syllable was shaky, muffled by crying, and then he broke down and said, "I don't know what I'm going to do with myself." Nobody knew how to handle such emotion. Joe had always seemed invulnerable. On Thursday, though, he cried continually.
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I don't feel much sympathy for Paterno (his demise appears to have been of his own making), but the collapse of his career should make for a powerful story. We'll see how well Posnanski will be able to tell it. He's a great writer, but the book was announced in March 2011, before the scandal broke, and plans have changed completely since then.
↵For more on Penn State football, check out Black Shoe Diaries.