Board of Trustees live on MSNBC right now.
From ESPN:
Both football coach Joe Paterno and president Graham Spanier are out at Penn State in the wake of a disturbing child sex abuse scandal involving former assistant coach.
Paterno said in a statement Wednesday that he would retire after the season, but the university's board of trustees met Wednesday night and decided Paterno would not be allowed to continue as coach. Assistant coach Tom Bradley has been named interim coach.
Spanier chose to resign Wednesday and will be replaced temporarily by provost Rodney Erickson.
Paterno has been besieged by criticism since Jerry Sandusky, his former defensive coordinator, was charged over the weekend with 40 criminal counts of molesting eight young boys between 1994 and 2009 through his charitable foundation for at-risk youths, The Second Mile. Sandusky is free on bail and has a Dec. 7 court hearing.
ESPN is carrying the press conference of the Board of Trustees live. Interesting that that sports reporters are giving them a bit of a hard time on canning old JoePa. Also almost all of the questions are about the football coach and the the university president.
By saying he would resign at the end of the season, Paterno had obviously tried to stall this action, but the Board of Trustees didn't go for it. The Board did the right thing.
What a way to go - become the all time winning football coach one week, and then get canned the next week. Something Shakespearean about that.
Ex-Paterno player Matt Millen on ESPN now. One of those Penn St. All America linebackers, and he is saying the Board did the right thing.
If you haven't seen it this was Millen's very emotional take on this from yesterday.
I don't know if there has ever been a bigger firing in the area of sports.