For nearly 15 years, Bill O’Brien and James Franklin struck the delicate balance of leading the Penn State football program that Joe Paterno built while keeping his complicated legacy at arm’s length.
Matt Campbell is striking a different balance. The first-year Nittany Lions coach has spent the months leading up to his Saturday, Sept. 5 debut praising his predecessor and embracing the family of the man who, by his own admission, wished he did more to stop Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children that led to Paterno's 2011 firing.
Campbell referenced Paterno multiple times at his introductory news conference and keeps a photo of him in his office at the program’s on-campus Lasch Building, the same facility where former assistant coach Mike McQueary
told Paterno he’d witnessed Sandusky molesting a child in a shower.
This past weekend, Campbell welcomed Paterno’s widow, Sue, to address the team. His son, Jay, was spotted chatting with Campbell on the practice fields earlier this summer.
And Sept. 1, Penn State announced the opening of the “Paterno Family Football Experience Room” at the sports museum located in the southwest corner of Beaver Stadium. It prominently features an office desk used by Paterno as well as “artifacts” associated with his more than 40 years as Nittany Lions coach.
It is the first substantial recognition of Paterno’s legacy within a Penn State sports facility since his firing and the removal of a statue honoring him the following summer. The campus library continues to bear his name, and the “Peachy Paterno” ice cream flavor is still a staple at the on-campus Berkey Creamery.
Campbell is all for it.
“I think from my end of it, it means the world to me to understand our history, to understand our past," he told reporters Sept. 2 when asked about the exhibit.
"What makes Penn State so special is the history of this place. It's who came before us, what they've done, to allow us to have a platform to play in front of this unbelievable crowd."
O’Brien, famously, derided the influence of the “Paterno people” at the university in an interview shortly after he took the Houston Texans head coaching job at the end of the 2013 season. He was hired to be Paterno’s immediate successor in 2012 and led Penn State through crippling NCAA sanctions resulting from the Sandusky scandal.
Franklin was occasionally complimentary of Paterno in passing but stopped short of ever fully embracing him and his family publicly, finding himself at odds with them at times. In 2021, Jay Paterno voted against funding Franklin sought for football facility upgrades from his alumni-elected seat on the university’s board of trustees. That drew a rebuke on Franklin’s behalf from some prominent lettermen, most notably former All-America linebacker LaVar Arrington, who felt the move was self-serving.
“There are certain people that are actually in prominent positions at the school, and their prominent names in the school’s history, that are taking delight in having the opportunity and the ability to look at our program be where it’s at, so what you can swoop in and save the day the way you want to save the day,” Arrington said on a podcast, referring to Jay Paterno.
Penn State did not release costs associated with the Paterno museum exhibit in its announcement.
Campbell’s tonal shift is noteworthy as he looks to win over the same fan base that ran effectively Franklin out of town last season as his team crumbled under the weight of a lofty preseason ranking that followed a College Football Playoff semifinal appearance in 2024.
Paterno remains popular in Happy Valley and throughout the program’s sprawling alumni base. Around campus, it’s common to see “409” bumper stickers, recognizing Paterno’s career win total that remains the all-time record at the Bowl Subdivision level.
Through that lens, Campbell’s pivot seems likely to be a crowd pleaser at a time when Penn State needs financial and fan support it can get to compete with the likes of Ohio State, Michigan and Indiana – Big Ten peers who’ve won national championships the past three seasons.
Paterno passed away from lung cancer in January of 2012, just a couple of months after his firing. At the time Sandusky was charged with the abuse in November of 2011, he expressed regret about his handling of allegations that McQueary had brought to him a decade earlier.
“This is a tragedy,” Paterno said. “It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
Paterno reported the allegations to Penn State administrators, who were subsequently convicted of covering them up. Sandusky himself was convicted on numerous counts of child sex abuse in 2012. Paterno was never charged with wrongdoing, and his family has long argued that he handled the allegations appropriately by passing them to his superiors.
Subsequent changes to state law have largely enshrined the chain-of-command reporting process that he followed. Detractors have criticized Paterno for not following up on the allegations or taking them to police when administrators did not act given his status as a then-living legend with tremendous influence.
The Lions open their season and the Matt Campbell era Saturday, Sept. 5 with a matchup against Marshall.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Penn State's Matt Campbell embracing Joe Paterno's legacy in shift from predecessors
