Paterno's Greek tragedy plays out

For me, the greatest mystery of Penn State's child sex-abuse scandal is not how many boys Jerry Sandusky allegedly abused. There will be many.

It's not how deep and lasting the unsettling episode's impact will be on the university. It will be great.

What I wonder most about is how Joe Paterno is weathering the storm.

After some verbal fumbles, the coach, fired on Nov. 9 along with Penn State's president, has wisely kept silent as the horror, outrage, and hysteria continue to unfold in Not-So-Happy Valley.

What is life like for him these days? How is he dealing with the torment? How has a man who spent his life in the spotlight surviving in these ominous shadows?

Is he holed up in his house, raging against time and fate like some beleaguered Lear?

Is he resigned and defeated, accepting of what seems to be his life's cruel final act?

Or is he plotting his response, his defense, his revenge?

As with any good mystery, the solution might be found in patterns and habits, likes and dislikes. And a good place to start with Paterno is with The Aeneid.

Paterno was a high school senior in Brooklyn when, aided by a Jesuit priest, he translated Virgil's epic poem from Latin. The story he discovered, Paterno has said often in the nearly seven decades since, shaped his life's mission.

Aeneas was a moral warrior, a mortal determined to meet a destiny that he saw as leading men and building the city of Rome. Substitute Penn State football for Rome, and you've got a pretty good description of what has motivated Paterno through the years.

"I don't think anybody can get a handle on what makes me tick as a person," Paterno once wrote, ". . . without understanding what I learned from the deep relationship I formed with Virgil."

So how would Virgil's classic hero have reacted to the kind of bitter defeat the ousted Penn State legend is experiencing now?

When the Greeks overran his native Troy, Aeneas had no choice but to build a new life and land elsewhere. JoePa is way too old for that. More applicable perhaps is an event late in The Aeneid.

Turnus, a fierce and longtime rival, battles with Aeneas. The poem's hero fells his enemy with a spear to the leg. Turnus begs for mercy but is killed by an incensed Aeneas, who had noticed his rival was wearing the belt of a slain friend.

That sounds like Paterno.

Though I've written two books on him, I claim no special insight into the man. No one, with the possible exception of his wife, knows Joe Paterno.

But if forced to, I'd guess that, like Aeneas, he too is now feeling angry and betrayed. And I'd wager that this man who liked nothing better than dissecting opponents in search of a weakness is now plotting a game plan, a counter strike.

I once saw him erupt at a reporter who merely asked if he felt it was time at last for the then-77-year-old coach to retire. Imagine how he feels about Penn State's board of trustees, former allies who fired him over the phone without having ever granted him a hearing. Resentment might not begin to describe it.

Resentment, however, could explain why, according to the Maxwell Club, his family agreed to have Paterno's name removed from the organization's coach of the year award. And it's not impossible to imagine him having told the Big Ten to do the same with its championship trophy.

I'm guessing that instead of poring over game films in his den, he is developing explanations as to why it seems he reacted so uncharacteristically, so inexplicably to reports of Sandusky's disturbing behavior.

If there are - if there can be - rational and reasonable explanations for his inaction, he undoubtedly is seeking them, with just as much determination as he used to focus on Pitt or Michigan.

Even at 84, even with cancer, Paterno does not like to lose. And, like Aeneas, no matter how tough things get, he won't quit.

Tim Curley, thepol ousted athletic director who now faces charges that he helped cover up Sandusky's wrongdoings, once told me how competitive the old coach was.

Whenever things got tough at Penn State, Curley noted, Paterno "was one of those guys who thrived on it. The rest of us would get gray hair and go crazy, and he's not like that. He's so competitive he seems to welcome the challenge."

Because if Paterno believed in himself, in his mission as completely as many of us believed, this sudden ignominy has to be killing him.

"He endures battles, storms, shipwrecks, and the rages of the gods," Paterno once said of Aeneas. "But the worst storm is the one that rages within himself."