On Tuesday Brown University announced that it would no longer be giving the Joe Paterno award to the year’s outstanding male freshman athlete.
According to an article by Mike McDermott in the Providence Journal:
In the spring of 2012, the Department of Athletics and Physical Education presented the award as it was originally created, honoring the year’s outstanding male freshman athlete but without Joe Paterno’s name attached. Now that the Freeh report has been released, the University will make a decision about the naming of the award in future years.”
Brown will be “retroactively” eliminating the Paterno name from the award.
Paterno was the Brown University quarterback from 1946 to 1949. He graduated from the school in 1950. Brown did not indicate if the school plans to remove the alumnus from the Brown Athletic Hall of Fame, eliminate his record 14 career interceptions from program history, or forfeit the program’s football wins in the late 1940s.
Brown also eliminated the Howard D. Williams ’17/Joseph V. Paterno ’50 football coaching chair, though that decision might have predated the Sandusky scandal.
