The Last Honest Man

The SportsProf has quite a bit on the BCS, the Cal-Texas scandal, etc., including Paterno’s vote for USC, Oklahoma and Auburn all as number one in the coaches poll.

Meanwhile, some people will scoff at Joe Paterno, say he’s the modern day Don Quixote, that he’s tilting at windmills trying to find his perfect world in the midst of the BCS madness.

And Coach Paterno is right, he may well be a voice in the wilderness.

And a powerful voice at that.

After all, his graduation rate exceeds the combined graduation rates of Utah (41%) and Pitt (31%), who are meeting on January 1 in the Fiesta Bowl.

Yet, it’s Utah coach Urban Meyer and Pitt coach Walt Harris who are moving on to “bigger” jobs, at Florida and Stanford respectively — who get rewarded, while Coach Paterno has been under siege at Penn State. True, his team’s on-the-field performance has been found lacking in the past five years, but, in the midst of all of the hypocrisy out there in BCS-land, Coach Paterno is a shining beacon of integrity and forthrightness.