OT- Joe Pa Book-WTF in the name of speed is going on?

Submitted by Ziff72 on

I just read an excerpt on Grantland from a new book on Joe Paterno.  Is this book 25 pgaes long?   How in the hell do you get a book out on Joe Paterno's life and the scandal that brought him down within 3 months?    From the descriptions I could find on the book this is not a John U Bacon 1 in a million I was in the right place at the right time situations where he was already working on a book when all hell broke loose.   He states that he went to Penn St once the story broke.   Check out the excerpt and if you have any further insight I'd love to hear it.  

This has to be a triumph of technology.  3 days after a man's death there is digital book to be purchased about it?

Also, the one thing I can't quite reconcile from the excerpt is that Joe was not close to his assistants and most of them thought he was a prick.   I could see that as I was never fond of him, but then why such loyalty?.   Why wasn't there more turnover?

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/15314/book-excerpt-death-comes-to-happy-valley 

 

Caesar

January 27th, 2012 at 10:00 AM ^

So if the book is about the scandal itself, then I agree. But if it's about his life, I think it could've been pre-written, as many folks thought he alrady had one foot in the grave.

CRex

January 27th, 2012 at 10:02 AM ^

It is just an attempt to cash in on the rabid personality cult JoePa has.  People are craving things about him and this is one way to let them scratch their itch.  It's like all those vendors who sell offbrand teeshirts on gameday, they're preying off mob desires.

Moleskyn

January 27th, 2012 at 10:17 AM ^

It's either not very long, thus not very detailed, or it's horribly written, since there's no way a full-length book could have been sufficiently edited in this amount of time.

Ponypie

January 27th, 2012 at 10:20 AM ^

In an age where people constantly write biographies about still-living people, this is not shock. It's not very difficult to put together a compilation of Wikipedia and other web-site content laced with a few original observations and maybe an interview or two.

Certainly not likely to demand our attention.

burtcomma

January 27th, 2012 at 10:26 AM ^

The book was written and researched in the most part a few years ago in anticipation of JoePA either retiring (rumors have been floating for a number of years) or of his death.  The guy has most of the work done, and then when this all hits goes in and does a relatively quick update, likely having already established his contacts and insiders and what not from the previous research.

That would make a lot of sense..........

mGrowOld

January 27th, 2012 at 10:42 AM ^

Maybe your right but I'm going to go with the "St. Joseph of Happy Valley" whitewash job until proven otherwise.  There's an old saying in PR "first liar wins" and in the case of JoePa those that wish to obfuscate that messy little kids thing near the end of his GLORIOUS and rightious tenure are taking the first shot.  

If you'll notice it started almost immediately in the press with virtually every talking head extolling his family values and imploring people "not to forget or overlook all the wonderful things he did" and paying little mention to the decade long enabling of Sandusky's crimes.   Then the eulogy where Knight rips the Trustees to rousing and sustained applause and now this book.

If the Patterno apologists have their way the name Sandusky will be wiped off the PSU records never to besmirch St. Joe's reputation again.  For the sake of the children victimized by Sandusky while JoePa conveniently and consistently looked the other way I hope they don't get away with it.

NoVaWolverine

January 27th, 2012 at 11:12 AM ^

... until I clicked the link. Posnanski, of Sports Illustrated, is one of the better sportswriters out there. He spent a year in Happy Valley and was starting to wrap up work on his own Paterno bio (due out this September) when the Sandusky scandal broke.

It'll be interesting to see how the scandal/firing affects Posnanski's final product. It's clear that he went into the project invested in the concept of Paterno as a good and decent man -- a man who tried, mostly successfully, to run a Div. I football program in a more honorable way than others. After the scandal broke, he seemed at a loss for words, but promised to uphold his "responsibility to write the best, most insightful and most honest book I can possibly write about Joe Paterno." In his brief Paterno obit for SI, he recounts asking the dying Paterno "if he hoped that people would come to see and measure his full life rather than a single, hazy event involving an alleged child molester."

I'm not sure "a single, hazy event" is the best description for the many-year pattern of repeated child rape that Sandusky is accused of.... Makes me think that, unfortunately, Posnanski's book will also ultimately downplay Paterno's role in all this.

 

Roachgoblue

January 27th, 2012 at 11:11 AM ^

Joe was an ego driven weak person. His program was dirty according to SI. The kids didn't appreciate Sandusky rolling into work daily.

mgoblue911

January 27th, 2012 at 11:22 AM ^

The Onion interview with Sandusky is the most accurate and telling thing that I have read yet.

Spoiler alert... it is not a funny article.  Why not?  There is nothing funny about this situation.

MGlobules

January 27th, 2012 at 1:16 PM ^

fear, further proof if we need it of how f'd up things were at PSU. My sense is that nobody was close to him, everyone egg-shelling it. Ugly, awkward situation, and serious lack of guts all around. 

Tater

January 27th, 2012 at 4:36 PM ^

I'm guessing the listed size of 229kb wlll work out to about 200 MS Word pages, or even more pages in kindle format.  

I would imagine that he has had the backstory ready for a few months, now.  It didn't take an Einstein to figure out that JoePa would be dead within a year after he got fired, if not sooner, because of how everything went down.  

If he had started in November, he could easily have had most of the work done before NYD, and just waited for the inevitable.  It's a $1.99 book.  He will make 66 cents for each copy sold.  Having a column on a blog owned by ESPN on which to advertise is a very nice perk.  

It's nice to have "juice" like that to get to the top of the search engines, too.