Penn State to open Paterno 'museum experience'

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  Jake TrotterSep 2, 2026, 12:02 PM ET

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  Jake Trotter is a senior writer at ESPN. Trotter covers college football. He also writes about other college sports, including men's and women's basketball. Trotter resides in the Cleveland area with his wife and three kids and is a fan of his hometown Oklahoma City Thunder. He covered the Cleveland Browns and NFL for ESPN for five years, moving back to college football in 2024. Previously, Trotter worked for the Middletown (Ohio) Journal, Austin American-Statesman and Oklahoman newspapers before joining ESPN in 2011. He's a 2004 graduate of Washington and Lee University. You can reach out to Trotter at jake.trotter@espn.com and follow him on X at @Jake_Trotter.

Penn State has announced it is opening the Paterno Family Football Experience Room in the All-Sports Museum inside Beaver Stadium on Thursday, a "permanent museum experience" the school says will celebrate Penn State's football history.

The museum will now include a Joe Paterno exhibit, featuring the former Penn State coach's original office desk and workspace, personal artifacts and a curated timeline documenting significant moments from his more than six decades with the Nittany Lions. The museum will also hold Penn State trophies, commemorating past achievements by individual teams and players.

"Penn State Football's history belongs to generations of student-athletes, coaches, staff and supporters who helped build this program," athletic director Pat Kraft said in a statement. "This room gives us an opportunity to preserve that history, present it thoughtfully and create an experience that connects the proud tradition of Penn State Football with its future."

The museum exhibit will open a little over 14 years since the school removed Paterno's statue outside the stadium, in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant under Paterno, was convicted in 2012 of sexually assaulting 10 boys over a 15-year period and sentenced to at least 30 years in prison. Paterno was fired in November of 2011.

An internal report headed by former FBI director Louis Freeh later concluded that Paterno and other university leaders "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade." The university and the Paterno family came to a settlement over the Freeh report in 2020. In that settlement release, the Penn State Trustees said the Freeh report contained "opinions about individuals and matters that are not shared by the university."

Paterno, who won 409 games from 1966-2011 at Penn State, died in 2012, just months after his firing. The Nittany Lions, under new coach Matt Campbell, open the season Saturday at home against Marshall.