Not Much Has Changed With Paterno

Except perception of his ability to coach now that Penn State is winning again
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
By Chico Harlan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Smizik: Nittany Lions need help, but upsets do happen

The phrase prefaces many of his responses to questions about what went wrong last year. "People forget," Penn State coach Joe Paterno habitually says, and when he says people, he is not including himself.

People forget that Penn State lost Zack Mills and Michael Robinson to early injuries in 2004, he says. People forget that most of the Nittany Lions' losses were close ones. People forget how Paterno claimed that only a thin margin separated his team from the ones laughing at it.
People forget. Paterno reminds.

It is the classic conversational go-round, perpetuated by the wheel of questions that rarely change. Penn State's 2005 season -- a 9-1 record entering this, its off week -- hasn't changed Paterno's words, either, because he still delivers the same refrains and speaks mostly with the same characteristic tone, half-engaged and half-agitated.

Only now, there's a twist. The perception of Paterno's words have flip-flopped. Once a coach pushing against the current, he now directs the current. Last year, he swore -- against the majority -- that his program needed only a few playmakers to turn close losses into emphatic wins. He refused, sometimes defiantly, to step away from the program he had helped for more than a half-century. But now, Penn State's 2005 season has validated Paterno's words, the ones once perceived widely as folly.

Indeed, 10 football games and nine wins have returned Paterno to his old position -- an authoritative voice in college football.

Before joining a Big Ten coaches' teleconference yesterday -- in which every conference coach fields media questions for roughly 10 minutes -- Paterno joined the line, listening only, as Purdue coach Joe Tiller finished speaking.

A questioner asked Tiller about a new Web site, www.firetiller.com, a side effect of the Boilermakers' 3-6 record. By the time Tiller wrapped up his answer -- "You'd have to have your head stuck in sand" not to know about the Web site, Tiller said -- Paterno readied for his turn.
But before fielding questions, he halted the conference moderator and said: "I got in on the tail end of Joe Tiller's comments. Hang in there, Joe. This will go away, too."

Paterno knows the ebbs and flows, at this point, because he has recently lived through both. Joe-Must-Go Web sites hounded him last season -- or at least they would have, if Paterno ever surfed the Internet.
Now most of the anti-Paterno Web sites are in disrepair -- vacated reminders of old sentiments.
"We were in every game [last year], but we just couldn't make a couple of plays," Paterno said, when asked about his team's change of fortune. "We had to go out and recruit a couple of kids who could go down the field and make some plays. We did that and now we are a little different football team."

Then the other routine question: How long will Paterno continue to coach? His answer yesterday matched almost identically with his previous responses, issued last season or before this one. Difference was, this time, nobody lamented his response.
"I have never really ever felt that my age or anything else had to do with how long I would coach," he said.

"The good Lord has been good to me and I have good genes. I feel good. I go to practice and I can run around and yell at people and scream at people and everything I did when I was a younger coach. I don't know how long I can go. We have to see. I don't sit here and say, 'I am going to go one more year, two more years.' I am going to coach until I wake up some morning and say, 'Hey, I have had enough' or the good Lord says to me, 'Hey, stay down -- you're down.' Right now that hasn't happened."

(Chico Harlan can be reached at aharlan@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1227.)