On Saturday night, while most of the cool kids were out smoking cigarettes in the Taco Bell parking lot, news broke that Penn State coach Joe Paterno had passed away due to complications from lung cancer. Specifically, the first report was published by Onward State, a student newspaper at PSU. The paper claimed that Nittany Lions players received emails informing them that Paterno had passed away, and thus the news was born.
But since nobody outside of Happy Valley is really familiar with Onward State, the news didn’t really get out until CBS Sports picked up the story and ran with it. That’s when all Twitter hell broke loose. You see, as it turned out, Paterno wasn’t dead on Saturday night. As we know, he passed away on Sunday morning. But almost immediately after the CBS story hit and then other major media outlets began picking it up, Paterno’s family came forward and said that JoePa wasn’t dead.
Whoops.
