GQ posted an excerpt of the excerpts it is running from Joe Posnanski’s Paterno book in its September issue.

The post contains a weird illustration of Paterno holding a cell phone while talking to someone with long hair. That couldn’t be Posnanski, who, like me, is hair challenged.

The short excerpts reveal that Scott Paterno was the first person in the inner circle to realize the magnitude of the Sandusky mess. He told his father that he may have coached his last game.

It also discloses that Paterno had no pull left on the Penn State board to bail him out in an effort to save his job.

Then there was this passage:

On Thursday, Paterno met with his coaches at his house. He sobbed  uncontrollably. This was his bad day. Later, one of his former captains, Brandon  Short, stopped by the house. When Brandon asked, “How are you doing, Coach?”  Paterno answered, “I’m okay,” but the last syllable was shaky, muffled by  crying, and then he broke down and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with  myself.” Nobody knew how to handle such emotion. Joe had always seemed  invulnerable. On Thursday, though, he cried continually.

“My name,” he told Jay, “I have spent my whole life trying to make that name  mean something. And now it’s gone.”

GQ said it will post the entire excerpt on Monday. Simon & Schuster will release the book on Tuesday.

Clearly, this short excerpt shows the access Posnanski had with the Paterno family. I’m all for access, and it will interesting to see what Posnanski writes about the inner circle’s reaction, leading up to Paterno’s death in January.

However, the book is 400-plus pages. Are you also going to be in the mood to read about Penn State’s great victory over Miami in the 1987 Fiesta Bowl? Probably not.

Again, can’t wait to see how Posnanski attempts to pull this off.