JOE PATERNO FIRED BY PENN STATE...

[soloist]

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Penn State trustees fired football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier (SPAN-yer) amid the growing furor over how the school handled sex abuse allegations against an assistant coach.

The massive shakeup Wednesday night came hours after Paterno announced that he planned to retire at the end of his 46th season.

But the outcry following the arrest of former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky on molestation charges proved too much for the board to ignore.

One key question has been why Paterno and other top school officials didn't go to police in 2002 after being told a graduate assistant saw Sandusky assaulting a boy in a school shower.

Paterno says he should have done more. Spanier has said he was not told the details of the attack.

Sandusky has denied the charges.

Rodney Erickson will serve as interim school president, and defensive coordinator Tom Bradley as interim coach.

-CC-

[Masamune]

Will not miss Spanier at all. Douchebag.

Paterno should have been given the option to retire, as he was prepared to do. The trustees will get a pretty big backlash over this one. Penn State brass cannot handle anything right can they?

[Frong]

Well, it doesn't seem like there was much choice but to fire Paterno at this point, but I'd still like to have seen the man go out gracefully instead of being abruptly given the boot via phone call. They could have at least let him coach the one last game, just to give him sole possession of the record for most major college football games coached in one career. I think you're probably right that the PSU admins have rocks for brains overall.