For a photo gallery of Penn State’s practice on Friday by Joe Hermitt of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, click here.
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UNIVERSITY PARK — The Penn State football team was stretching its collective muscles Friday afternoon as it stretched out from one end to the other of one of the two 80-yard parallel fields inside Holuba Hall, the indoor practice facility of the Nittany Lions.
The hundred-plus players covered row after row of artificial turf. Like pastel M&M’s, their jerseys of green and white and Penn State blue and red and powder blue dotted the field.
You had to look for him — as his stature grows the octogenarian diminishes in size — but there was Joe Paterno, in the middle of the group.
He was wearing an ensemble from the vintage JoePa Collection: dark blue Nike windbreaker, authentic grey sweatshirt with the collar of a white oxford peaking out. Black coach’s shoes. And khaki pants so baggy they might be a better fit for defensive tackle Jared Odrick. But, surprisingly, no cuff. The turf is filled with little black pebbles in lieu of dirt, so there’s no muddy field laundry challenge for Sue.
Joe was joking with some players as they bent at the waist and attempted to touch their toes. Attempted. “I can do better,” you know the old man was saying.
Now, it may have been because there were a couple dozen writers and folks with cameras there, but Paterno shook out his legs and slowly bent over. As he leaned over the tips of his 82-year-old fingers stopped six inches from the green turf, not quite scrapping the field. So Paterno bent his knees a bit. His khakis crinkled and the coach’s fingertips nipped the tip of the blades of plastic grass. Joe smiled and laughed.
“Ah hah!” He was still flexible. Enough, anyway.
It was not an exercise he could have done a year ago. Bad hip, and to be honest, a few extra pounds in the middle. He couldn’t have done it in 2006, when he was recovering from a broken leg. A tough three years.
That was then, this is now. This was the moment why Joe Paterno is still coaching, his 60th season at Penn State and his 44th as head coach.
“It’s been fun,” Paterno said when was asked by a New Orleans writer if he “would talk a little bit about your career.” And, Mr. Hemingway, would you talk a little bit about writing books?
A WEEK NOT FOR THE WEAK
And this is the week why Joe Paterno is still coaching, his 393 victories tops in major college football history.
Last Sunday, there was a celebration of the 10-2 squad at the State College Quarterback Club’s annual banquet, with more than 500 adoring fans in attendance. Later that day, Paterno accepted his 36th invitation to a bowl game as his Nittany Lions will face LSU on Jan. 1 in Orlando at the Capital One Bowl.
On Monday and Tuesday, he was in New York City. Penn State running great Curt Warner and Jim Weaver, a 1966 Penn State letterman and Virginia Tech athletic director, were being honored by the National Football Foundation. There was a reception hosted by Penn State and another by Phil Knight, the founder of Nike.
On Wednesday, he returned to State College to prepare for a trip the next day.
On Thursday, Paterno flew to Orlando, where there was Capital One kickoff luncheon featuring the Penn State coach and LSU head coach Les Miles. (Miles is the 10th LSU coach since Paterno became head coach; State College native Mike Archer was the No. 5, 27-18-1 from 1987-90.) Paterno flew back home in time for practice Thursday afternoon.
Friday was a pre-bowl press conference and practice. Saturday, another round of recruits were on campus.
“So,” Paterno said, “I have not looked at a tape” of LSU.
That he is the head football coach at Penn State keeps him going, keeps the blood pumping, keeps the spotlight shining.
“I have enjoyed every minute of my career,” Paterno told that LSU beat writer and a room full of about 50 media types, “or I never would have stayed in it. ”
BYE-BYE BOBBY BOWDEN
Stay. That’s something Bobby Bowden at Florida State will no longer do. The Seminole coach was asked to leave after 34 years, a 6-6 record in 2009 and five fewer career wins than Paterno. Bowden will finish his career against West Virginia, a previous coaching stop, in the Gator Bowl.
“I talked to him the other day before he decided he was going to give it up,” Paterno said. “Bobby has done a fantastic job for Florida State. What happened there, I don’t have all the ins and the outs. I think it’s disappointing to see a colleague that you respect and admire and appreciate the job he’s done in the middle of all this turmoil, as to what he should do and shouldn’t do and what have you.
“He’s a great guy, he really is,” Paterno added. “What you see and the way he acts, the person he is and his wife, Ann are — they are good friends. If he wanted to get out, fine. If they forced him out, I wouldn’t be happy about that. But I don’t know all the ins and outs.”
One would assume that Bowden shared an in and maybe two outs with Joe when the two talked right before Bobby got the axe, but Paterno is not one to kiss and tell. He’ll lambast the BCS, but he has repeatedly waved off any and all chances to chastise and castigate the Seminole Nation for its tomahawk chop of Bowden.
Bobby’s football demise means that Paterno has an unencumbered run to 400 wins — a remarkable achievement. Only Eddie Robinson (408) and John Gagliardi (471) have won more college football games.
Penn State’s next 11 games are: LSU (Capital One Bowl) and on into 2010: Youngstown State, at Alabama, Kent State, Temple, at Iowa, Illinois, at Minnesota, Northwestern, at Ohio State, at Indiana. A case could be made for and against as many as four losses in that group. But he’ll get there, no doubt about that.
That Penn State is 50-13 since the start of the 2005 season and also boasts the highest federal graduation rate of all the teams in the Dec. 6 Associated Press poll — 89 percent — is, of course, a credit to Paterno.
A BIG ASSIST
But equal plaudits, if not more, go to his coaching staff. In a certain sense of the word, they are enablers. Paterno didn’t need to dig into the tapes of LSU last week; his assistants were already on it.
As Paterno was stretching during practice on Friday, longtime defensive coordinator Tom Bradley was taking the field. Decked in a grey sweatshirt and old blue sweatpants because he’s already packed for the bowl trip, Bradley was talking about his plans on Saturday to do some scouting and take in a high school playoff game. The surrogate son was feeding the pipeline.
Across the field, minutes later, was the biological son working with Daryll Clark’s heir apparent at quarterback. Jay Paterno was chatting up freshman Kevin Newsome, preparations for next season a bit more intense now that only one game remains for Clark. More than any other person on the face of the Nittany Planet, Newsome will have a hand — and feet — in determining when in 2010 JoePa will hit 400. Jay’s role will be huge.
JayPa and Bradley both handle the media extremely well and guide the team’s strengths — a nationally-ranked defense and a quarterback position that has produced two (two!) Big Ten MVPs in five years. They are loyal, able and smart.
The assistant coach mantra is one that the elder Paterno repeats with regularity. But this past week it ran especially true. While Joe was flying up and down the East Coast, his coaches were at home, starting to look at film of LSU, prepping for Cap One and connecting with their players.
The assistants are all near lifers. Get a load of the number of years the Nittany Lion coaches have been on Penn State’s staff: 32, 31, 22, 15, 14, 9, 6, 6 and 2. Only Larry Johnson Sr. and Ron Vanderlinden are threats to leave before Paterno does, and Joe dodged the LJ bullet last offseason. (Illinois, LJ’s intended destination, just fired four assistants, by the way.)
Assistants Dick Anderson and Galen Hall, teammates and Penn State Class of 1963 grads, are closer to 70 than 60. Both have been head coaches elsewhere, as has Vanderlinden. They were anonymous at Friday’s practice. Just as they are on campus. And at the grocery store. Just like they like it.
Much of the credit from the Lions’ return from the depths of 26-33 in 2000-2004 goes to the other men on the field in Holuba Hall on Friday.
“Well, it is gratifying to me” for the program to bounce back, Paterno said. “But I think the credit has to go to the assistant coaches…I’m pleased with the squad, but I just don’t think we are giving the assistant coaches enough of credit for the kind of job they have done. They have stuck together and they have been great.”
And that, Joe Paterno knows, is no stretch.
