Source: Penn State coach Joe Paterno will retire at end of season

(CBS/AP) - Embattled Penn State football coach Joe Paterno will retire at the end of the season, a person familiar with the decision told the Associated Press.

Pictures: Joe PaternoPictures: Child-sex scandal rocks Penn State

The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says Paterno will announce his retirement Wednesday.

Paterno has been besieged by criticism since former defensive coordinator and one-time heir apparent Jerry Sandusky was charged over the weekend with molesting eight young boys between 1994 and 2009. Athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz have been charged with failing to notify authorities after an eyewitness reported a 2002 assault.

Paterno decided to retire at age 84, in the middle of his 46th season with the Nittany Lions. He won 409 games, a record for major college football, but now, the grandfatherly coach known as "Joe Pa," who had painstakingly burnished a reputation for winning "the right way," leaves the only school he's ever coached in disgrace.

Paterno has not been accused of legal wrongdoing. But he has been assailed, in what the state police commissioner called a lapse of "moral responsibility" for not doing more to stop Sandusky.

He has been questioned over his apparent failure to follow up on a report of the 2002 incident in which Sandusky allegedly sodomized a 10-year-old boy in the showers at the team's football complex.

Paterno told the athletic director, Tim Curley, who has since stepped down and has charged with lying to the state grand jury investigating the case. The Penn State vice president has also been charged, and the university president could follow.

Complete coverage of the Penn State child sex abuse case on Crimesider