It's unfortunate that Paterno's legacy will be forever tarnished

I don't remember exactly when I first heard who Joe Paterno was, but if memory serves it was somewhere in the late 1970s. By 1979 I had started paying attention to college football and even got to go to the Orange Bowl that New Year's Day, so that's probably the right time.

That afternoon, Jan. 1, 1979, as I was in Miami's Orange Bowl watching Barry Switzer's Oklahoma Sooners beat Tom Osborne's Nebraska Cornhuskers 31-23, Joe Paterno's Penn State team was also playing for the National Championship that same day against Bear Bryant's Alabama Crimson Tide.

This was when football really started getting exciting to me. Almost simultaneously, the Morris Redskins football team was reaching its golden era and within a couple of years, my favorite NFL team, the Miami Dolphins, were appearing in a couple of Super Bowls.

Up until that point, Paterno had coached three undefeated teams (1968, 1969 and 1973) and won a major bowl game, but had yet to be awarded a National Championship by the AP writers. In 1968, Penn State won the Orange Bowl 15-14 over the Kansas Jayhawks, but finished behind undefeated Ohio State. Then in 1969, Penn State won the Orange Bowl over Missouri, 10-3, to go 11-0, but finished second to undefeated Texas for the national championship that year.

In 1973, Penn State won the Orange Bowl over the LSU Tigers, 16-9, but finished behind Notre Dame — a 24-23 winner over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl that year.

A lot of what my memory tells me about Penn State back in that era is that the fact they were an independent team hurt them as far as prestige and strength of schedule goes. However, in 1982 Joe Paterno finally got his national championship when the Nittany Lions beat then-undefeated Georgia 27-23. Nebraska finished No. 3 that year, but had lost to PSU 27-24 in the regular season, and SMU ended with 11 wins but a tie (17-17 to Arkansas) to finish fourth.

In 1986, Paterno would coach Penn State to his second and final national title by going undefeated and winning the Fiesta Bowl over Miami, 14-10, but the second year after the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten Conference in 1993, they went undefeated again, only to not win the national championship. In 1986, Penn State throttled Oregon 38-20 in the Rose Bowl, but Nebraska beat Miami in the Orange Bowl 24-17 for the Bowl Coalition title.