Paterno's long goodbye ends with public memorial

STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Some 10,000 ticket holders headed to a campus memorial service on Thursday for one final goodbye to late Penn State coach Joe Paterno, concluding five days of public mourning for the college football legend.

Big crowds have been turning out since Paterno died on Sunday of lung cancer at age 85, with supporters choosing to remember how he built a hugely successful and profitable college football program rather than his fall from grace for failing to alert police to a child sexual abuse scandal involving an assistant.

Interest in "A Memorial to Joe" at the school's basketball arena on Thursday afternoon was so intense that 10,000 free tickets were snapped up within seven minutes earlier this week. At least one ticket holder tried to profit by selling a ticket for $66,000 on EBay but the online site immediately banned the sale.

The week of mourning has drawn back to campus stars from past football teams, members of the 2011 squad, Penn State alumni who have no memory of any other football coach, undergraduates, and townspeople to remember the winningest coach in college football history.

They lined the streets by the thousands on Wednesday to watch the hearse carrying his casket weave through the town of State College and past Beaver Stadium on its way to his grave.

Mourners on Thursday will see four videos chronicling Paterno's career, six players representing his decades of coaching here, speeches by a Paterno scholarship winner, and a college dean.

The hero's sendoff contrasts with the sudden end of Paterno's career in November, when the university's board of trustees fired him following revelations about a child sex abuse investigation of his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

Trustees, faced with a grand jury report that accused Sandusky of years of child sex abuse and accusations of perjury by two high-ranking university officials, concluded Paterno - who was not charged in the scandal - had not done enough to report a 2002 incident that authorities said involved Sandusky and a child.

Sandusky, 67, who maintains his innocence, faces 52 criminal counts accusing him of molesting 10 boys over 15 years, using his position as head of The Second Mile, a charity dedicated to helping troubled children, to find his victims. The court has placed him under house arrest.

Nearly 40,000 admirers of Paterno - a figure that nearly matches the entire population of State College - stood in line on two cold, raw days for a chance to pay respects at a campus spiritual center only a few blocks from his home.

Paterno won a major college record 409 games and two national championships in 46 years, creating a football powerhouse that generated $53 million in profit in 2010, according to Forbes magazine.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Will Dunham)