Paterno Won Sweeter Deal Even as Scandal Played Out
In January 2011, the same month that Joe Paterno learned of an investigation
into his longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and testified before a grand
jury, he began negotiating with his superiors to amend his contract. The timing
was something of a surprise, because the contract was not set to expire until
the end of 2012, according to university documents and people with knowledge of
the discussions.
By August, Mr. Paterno, who was the football coach at Penn State, and the
university’s president, both of whom were by then embroiled in the investigation
into Mr. Sandusky’s sexual assaults on boys, had reached an agreement. Mr.
Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it
would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 would be forgiven, and
he would have use of the university’s private plane.
The university’s full board of trustees was kept in the dark about the
arrangement until November, when Mr. Sandusky was arrested and the contract
arrangements, along with so much else at Penn State, were upended. Mr. Paterno
was fired, two top university officials were indicted and the trustees came
under assault from the coach’s angry supporters.
Board members who raised questions about whether the university ought to go
forward with the payments were shut down, and in the end, the board, bombarded
with hate mail and threatened with a defamation lawsuit by Mr. Paterno’s family,
gave the family virtually everything it wanted, with a package worth roughly
$5.5 million.
The details of Mr. Paterno and his family’s fight for money seem to deepen one
of the lasting truths of the Sandusky scandal: the significant power that Mr.
Paterno exerted on the state institution, its officials, its alumni and its
purse strings.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/sports/ncaafootball/joe-paterno-got-richer-contract-amid-jerry-sandusky-inquiry.html?emc=na
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