DeAndre Levy accomplished a lot of great things on the field during his time at Wisconsin, but it was something he unintentionally did to Joe Paterno on the sidelines that the Detroit Lions linebacker is most proud of.
The play happened 10 years ago, when Levy was tackling a Penn State player near the sideline and his momentum took him into Paterno’s lower body. The former Nittany Lions coach suffered a broken leg, and Levy said in a recent feature for Men’s Journal that injuring Paterno was his finest moment at Wisconsin.
He was most famous for a 2006 play against Penn State, a sideline tackle that accidentally drove him into coach Joe Paterno, breaking JoePa’s left leg. Ten years later, Levy now calls that incident “my proudest moment in college,” as history has since revealed Happy Valley’s sad secrets. “That dirtbag, man,” says Levy of Paterno, who was recently implicated as being aware of child sexual abuse committed by his assistant Jerry Sandusky as early as 1976. “We’ve gotta stop prioritizing sports over humanity,” says Levy. “Just because somebody can throw a football or coach football, they’re excluded from their wicked acts.”
Here’s the video of the play:
Paterno died in 2012 months after he was dismissed by Penn State for his role in the child sex abuse scandal that rocked the program. Since that time, information has surfaced indicating Paterno knew what Sandusky was doing and did nothing to stop it. That’s precisely why Levy takes pride in having inflicted pain on him.
