My grandfather was the smartest man I have ever known, particularly when he was in his mid-80s, and once after we had been rocked by some now-obscure tragedy, he told us, “I am disappointed but not surprised. When you have lived a life as full as mine you don’t get surprised by that much anymore.”

That’s what I thought about over the weekend when I imagined the incredible sadness and pain that an aged Joe Paterno surely must have felt when the legendary Penn State football coach saw the pictures of his longtime friend and coaching colleague, Jerry Sandusky, being loaded in the back of a Pennsylvania State Police car.

Joe, now just a month away from his 85th birthday, has lived a full life indeed while becoming the winningest coach in the game’s history but all of us know that was recently displaced. Today he is crushed and devastated by the explosive scandal that has totally ravaged his beloved “Happy Valley.”

Back in the day, I was around Jerry Sandusky maybe a half-dozen times or more and he, too, was a legend of a man. He was Paterno’s rock for 30 years, the Nittany Lions’ famed defensive coordinator who earned the school the beastly moniker, “Linebacker U.” He turned down several offers to be the head coach elsewhere and I wrote a couple of columns about his efforts to help kids through his noble charity, The Second Mile.

Further, Jerry has wonderful relatives in Chattanooga and sometimes when he would visit we’d just talk about college football in general. He was brilliant, funny, and is among the last people on earth I ever thought would now be facing a nauseated list of allegations involving some of the very children he so marvelously championed.

Sandusky, who retired from PSU in 1999 when it finally dawned on him he couldn’t outlast Paterno, was enormously revered in State College until his shocking arrest. “JoePa,” with this year’s team now ranked No. 12 in the country and the only loss of the season to Alabama, is riding a high horse but languished, “If this is true, we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things.”

Already the university’s athletic structure is falling apart. Athletic director Tim Curley and university vice president Gary Schultz were both arraigned yesterday on serious charges of perjury during the grand jury investigation. Curley had already asked for an “administrative leave” until the issue is resolved and Schultz has resigned effective immediately.

Meanwhile, news columnists and many others want Paterno to answer to the question similar to the one then-Sen. Howard Baker made famous during the Watergate trial, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” And law enforcement officials are aggressively ramping up the investigation, asking that any other Sandusky victims contact the state police immediately.

My personal thoughts are dizzying. First, if just one of the allegations in the scathing 23-page report is found to be true, everyone with just the slightest brush in the purported 15 years of abuse should be punished to the full extent of the law. The greatest tragedy is the victims, let’s be crystal-clear on that. If my friend Jerry Sandusky ever hurt a child in any way, I strongly believe he should be executed.

Secondly, even the smallest of the chilling allegations is bigger than all of JoePa’s 410 wins at Penn State. Yes, I believe Joe Paterno is an American treasure, a man who has repeatedly held his team and its players to a higher standard than most, but if it is found he covered up even only once for his close friend, I believe Penn State University should fire him quicker than Ohio State ousted another legend, Woody Hayes, after he slugged Clemson player Charlie Bauman in the 1978 Gator Bowl.

The whole thing is unfathomable. On Monday Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, Linda Kelly, said at the arraignment of Curley and Schultz, “Their inaction likely allowed a child predator to continue to victimize children for many, many years.” State police commissioner Frank Noonan added, “As you go through this case as I have, there aren’t many heroes … these children are scarred for life.”

It hardly seems fair for Joe Paterno to be brought down by the deplorable and heinous actions of somebody else but if he turned “a blind eye” and if indeed he left a known predator remain unbridled on his football staff long ago, the one we know and love as “JoePa” will soon end his storied career as one of the biggest disappointments I have known in a lifetime of sports.

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