Editor’s Note: This is the 11th of a 19-part daily series that seeks to answer the questions surrounding the 2010 Penn State football team. Check back every weekday until the Blue-White Game to see the question of the day. Monday, we asked: ‘What Gives With Stefen Wisniewski?‘ Today, we ask: ‘What does Joe think of his team now?‘
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On a teleconference call Tuesday with the other football coaches in the Big Ten, Joe Paterno was looking for bigger and better.
A better football team. And a bigger Big Ten Conference.
Right now, the 83-year-old isn’t happy with either of them.
First the team. The Nittany Lions have just six practices remaining among the 20 allotted for spring drills, which culminate on April 24 with the Blue-White Game in Beaver Stadium:
‘We’re not a very good football team right now,’ said Paterno, who enters his 45th season as Penn State’s head coach. ‘The quarterbacks are very average. But they’re young and hopefully over a period of time they will get better.
‘We’re very young in key spots. We do not have a quarterback who played more than 20 plays last year.’
That would be sophomore Kevin Newsome that Paterno is referring to. Newsome completed 8 of 11 passes for 66 yards in 2009, and ran the ball 20 times for 95 yards. The other leading candidate for the starting quarterback job is redshirt sophomore Matt McGloin, who played in three games last season and threw a pair of incomplete passes.
Paterno isn’t pleased with the offensive line, which must replace a pair of tackles and is breaking in Doug Klopaz at center for Stefen Wisniewski, who shifted to right guard.
‘We’re very average at offensive line,’ Paterno said.
‘The kicking game is terrible,’ he added, later amending it to ‘I’m a little disappointed in our kicking game.’
We can only figure the coach is talking about the Nittany Lions’ challenge of finding a replacement for punter Jeremy Boone. Senior place-kicker Collin Wagner made a 34-yard field goal during a team scrimmage in Beaver Stadium on Saturday, and is coming off an under-rated 2009 season in which he made 15 of 22 field goals and 46 consecutive PATs.
On the plus side, Paterno did say Penn State has ‘some very gifted skilled people on both sides of the ball.’
On offense, that would have to include running backs Evan Royster and Stephfon Green, as well as wide receivers Graham Zug and Derek Moye.
On defense, among those Paterno had to have been alluding to is a seasoned secondary that includes Nick Sukay, Stephon Morris, D’Anton Lynn and Chaz Powell, as well a rehabbing Drew Astorino.
Clearly, for Paterno, consecutive 11-2 seasons are long gone, as are leaders like Daryll Clark, Sean Lee and Jared Odrick.
‘We have a lot of work ahead of us,’ Paterno said. ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t get it done, but I think we have to be realistic and stop dreaming that all of a sudden the good Lord is going to come down and bless us. We’ve got to go to work.’
BIG TEN EXPANSION
On the conference call, Paterno was asked for his thoughts about Big Ten expansion.
He’s all for it, wants at least one team added from the East and is, quite frankly, a bit surprised that only members of the media are asking for his point of view.
‘Unfortunately, the athletic directors and the conference commissioners forget I’ve been in this thing for 60 years, so I don’t get a lot of input,’ Paterno said. ‘They don’t call me and say, ‘What do you think of this and what do you think of that?’ ‘
The coach does think the conference needs to add at least one team, maybe as many as three. He said super-conferences may be the horizon, with the Pac-10 taking an aggressive stand.
‘I think there is going to be 12- or 14-team conferences, and even maybe 16-team conferences,’ said Paterno.
On top of Paterno’s wish list for the Big Ten is a university from the East. He didn’t say which team he prefers, but he does think the Eastern TV market would embrace another school located east of the Midwest.
‘I would like to see our particular conference, the Big Ten, move east a little bit,’ Paterno said. ‘I would like to see at least one team in the East. I think it would give us a little broader television market and a little bit more exposure.’
Paterno emphasized that a school shouldn’t be invited just on the basis of its football and/or basketball prowess, or even a TV market. The Big Ten, as much — if probably not more than — any other BCS conference, is also bound through research endeavors and academic standards.
‘It is a question of bringing somebody in that can handle the academics, research, AAU (Association of American University) schools,’ he said. The school would have ‘people who are committed to women’s sports, people who are committed to all sports programs, the commitment to the ideals that intercollegiate athletics should be all about. Now, can you find one, two, three, four…I don’t know. That is up to people who are outside my realm.’
