Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
The first thing you notice about about Sally Jenkins' Washington Post interview with Joe Paterno is the accompanying photo.
In it, Paterno -- his sweater slightly askew, his hair barely combed -- looks more dissheveled than I've ever seen him. He also looks almost exactly like his late mother, who lived into her 90s. Most disturbingly, though, at least for anyone who cares about him, is the fact that he looks like he's been through a wringer.
He has, of course. The lung cancer, the chemotherapy and his wrenching departure from Penn State after 61 loyal years has caused him to lose much. As the photo makes clear, he's lost weight. There's less flesh in his drawn face, less sparkle in his eyes.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
Oh really?
Does God prefer white quarterbacks over, say, African-American linemen?
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
Perhaps it was just me who was struck by the coincidence.
There are elements in the background of new Penn State football coach Bill O'Brien that not only bring to mind one of the more meaningful episodes in his predecessor's career but which would intrigue a dramatist -- or a psychiatrist.
And I'm certain that if Joe Paterno took the time to examine his replacement's past, he'd have shuddered with discomfort.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
That night, the Philadelphia Warriors were playing in Game 5 of the first championship series of the Basketball Association of America, a league that two years later changed its name to the National Basketball Association.
Eddie Gottlieb, the South Philadelphia native who was the Warriors' coach and part owner, had been associated with numerous failed pro leagues. Surveying this enthusiastic crowd, he sensed that this one was going to make it.
But even Gottlieb, who died in 1979, would have been amazed at how that league, scheduled to being its lockout-shortened season on Christmas Day, has grown and prospered in the subsequent 64 years.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
Joe Paterno is really not a saint. Penn State is not Harvard. Happy Valley is no Eden.
Those were myths. Paterno and the university, aided by an adoringly complicit media, created them, disseminated them, and benefitted from them for decades.
Most believed them. But some, particularly the coaches and schools whose troubles provided a convenient contrast to that pristine Penn State image, bristled at what they perceived as unwarranted, unchallenged arrogance.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
For the local golf industry, when it rains, it pours.
Literally.
A season of foul weather and flooded courses has added more storm clouds to what already was a gloomy forecast for local course operators.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
Now that a group of Wall Street dilettantes has purchased the 76ers, it seems like a good time to look back at the long-forgotten Philadelphia plebian who was the first owner of the city’s first NBA team.
When in 1946 the Philadelphia Warriors became charter members of the Basketball Association of America – soon to be renamed the National Basketball Association – the man who owned and operated them was a hustling little sports promoter from Manayunk named Pete Tyrrell.
Born in Philadelphia in 1896, Tyrrell was the son of an rowhouse-dwelling, English-born barber. He graduated from now-defunct St. John’s High in Manayunk before taking a job as a stenographer for the Girard Trust bank. He later worked as a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad clerk, a typewriter repairman and a sportswriter for the Manayunk Review.
Frank Fitzpatrick, Inquirer Sports Columnist
I understand that Ryan Howard isn’t a football player. But he is a professional athlete and as such, his torn Achilles tendon ought to raise serious concerns for Phillies fans.
A 2010 study by Duke researchers that appeared in the journal, “Foot and Ankle Specialist” revealed that more than a third (36 percent) of NFL players who sustained ruptured Achilles tendons never played again.
That’s “never”, as in the answer to the question, how many times have the Eagles won the Super Bowl?
E-mail Frank here or follow him on Twitter. Reach Frank at ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com.
