When Joe Paterno was named the AP Coach of the Year, I decided against saying anything. It would seem snide, petty and hardly that legit coming from a Pitt partisan. Lucky for me, Orson at EDSBS said everything I was thinking, and then some:

Instead, they go with sentiment and Joe, whose notable achievements in the past five years have been hanging referee dolls from his door and slowly watching his son turn quality quarterback recruits into scrambling, concussed pick machines. Because he’s 79! And won a lot of games a few decades ago! And he’s good ol’ Joe Pa! (Pass the scotch and tell me the one about Beano Cook and Doc Blanchard in a bar in Singapore again, Joe!)

Which are all true, of course: Joe Pa exemplifies both the Tao and De of how to be a college coach the right way, devoting the better half of his life’s effort and a considerable amount of his money to the university he calls home. Was he the best coach this year, though, comrade? And do you reward someone for cleaning up their own mess? Do you dig rhetorical sentences at the end of mini-columns? The answer to all of these questions is no, comrade. Joe Pa got it for being cute and old and venerable, and that’s lazy like falling asleep with half a burrito stuck in your mouth. (We’re looking at you, Aaron Taylor. You know it happens all the time–otherwise, how would you explain the perpetually askew mouth?)

And definitely read the comments. There’s some fantastic ND myopia. The piece mentions other candidates that were more worthy, but because it failed to mention Charlie Weis, the ND readers freaked a little. Missing the main point of the piece to complain that ND and Weis were dissed by the omission.