The Gingrich-Sandusky Connection

[Guest post by Simon van Zuylen-Wood]

The late Joe Paterno was one of Newt Gingrich's favorite management gurus. Yesterday, video spelunker Alex Kaczynski uncovered a 1998 Charlie Rose interview in which Gingrich relates some advice Paterno gave him about assistant coaches (h/t The Atlantic Wire). Paterno's wisdom, according to Newt, consisted mostly of platitudes like, "If the coach and the assistant coaches don't have their act together they're going to be offering very conflicting signals."

Newt once quoted a more jarring nugget of JoePa sagacity in his 1995 course “Renewing American Civilization," which I “reviewed” here: “I called Joe Paterno a couple months ago and asked him about being a head coach. He said: one of the keys is to let your assistant coaches make mistakes.”

Eek.