Who wants to be a millionaire: JoePa

This is as surprising as someone revealing that Rush Limbaugh is fat:

Records released Friday by the university show the 82-year-old Hall of Famer is Penn State's highest-paid employee, making more than $1.03 million last year.

That includes his base salary plus any bonuses, but does not include compensation from outside the university that top coaches typically collect. Paterno's compensation from other sources is not a public record.

We've long speculated that Mr. Paterno (will be fine thank you very much) made much less than the top college football coaches and here we have empirical evidence. Sure, he probably makes a boat-load of money from endorsement deals but what big-name coach doesn't? The point is Paterno makes less than 1/3 of the nation's highest paid coaches Les Miles and Nick Saban (3.8 M) and let's face it, would Nittany Nation be proud of the recruiting tactics that Saban has displayed? Yeah, we'll take that old guy in a heartbeat, we still have a soul.

Now that we know does this change anything, people? Not for me, but hey, thanks to the lawyers for bringing this to light.

Paterno's salary was once one of college football's most closely-guarded secrets until his base salary of roughly $500,000 was made public two years ago as part of an open records request of state retirement data initiated by the Patriot News of Harrisburg.

Oh, the good old Harrisburg Patriot, collecting your puppy's droppings since 1986. Hope the money spent to get this info helps you guys sell papers.*

More fun with numbers:

Men's basketball coach Ed DeChellis made more than $642,000.

Of other salaries released, five were for officers of the university and therefore paid mostly from public funding or tuition. That includes president Graham Spanier, who made $590,000.

So Spanier makes almost as much as the Men's Basketball coach, interesting indeed. I would say that a half Mil isn't that much to pay for a major university president but 600 Grand is really really cheep for a big time university basketball coach. I think in Paterno's and DeChellis' case we have a very good bargain.

*not really I hope you go bankrupt for this obvious attempt at publicity.