Positivity: “He Could Coach 20 More Years”
People in Ohio and Wisconsin can be forgiven if they’re less than pleased with what has unfolded in Happy Valley this year. But regardless of how the rest of their season goes, you would have to be awfully hard-hearted not to concede that 78 year-old Joe Paterno’s 2005 Penn State football coaching success is one of the better feel-good stories in sports in a long time:
Confidence fuels Nittany Lions revival
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — For those speculating that this remarkable vindication season offers a perfect opportunity for Joe Paterno to go out in a blaze of glory, we have this retirement update from Deliriously Happy Valley:
“He could coach 20 more years,” said his son and assistant coach, Jay. “I’m not exaggerating. The sucker could coach 20 more years.”
Joe Paterno and the Nittany Lions are one win away from clinching a Big Ten crown. Why stop there? Paterno would be 98 then. Why not go two more years, go for triple digits?
Yo, Joe, why not coach forever?
After walloping Wisconsin 35-14 on a blissful Indian Summer evening in the Pennsylvania hills, the old man looks eternal. Looks like he’s had a football facelift, an injection of coaching botox. Urban Meyer wishes he cut as dashing a sideline figure as JoePa right now.
Paterno presided over a satisfying senior day Saturday, feeling the love rain down from 109,865 fans. In direct defiance of virtually every preseason prediction, his program is back where it once held residence.
“This is what Penn State football is all about,” said Paul Posluszny, a classic hard-edged Nittany Lion linebacker. “Coming to Penn State, you don’t think you’re going to lose. This season right here, this is why kids come to Penn State.”
The regular season ends Nov. 19 at Michigan State, with a chance to win the program’s first Big Ten title since 1994. Along with it would come Penn State’s first BCS bid. And judging from some of the wild results this Saturday, hey, it’s too early to completely rule out the Rose Bowl.
Thus the 364-day revival of a seemingly passé program has terminated the retirement movement that swarmed around Paterno. He’s back to going out on his terms — as if there were ever a question about that — and if you believe his son, his terms could be long term.
“I would think I’ll retire before Joe does,” said Jay, calling his dad “sucker” and “Joe” in consecutive breaths. “I think he’s signed on to coach my kids.”
A year ago Sunday, there were few Penn State fans who still wanted Paterno to coach the kids he had on scholarship right then, much less the next generation. The Nittany Lions had just lost to Northwestern to drop to 2-7, 0-6 in Big Ten play.
You had to view the world through rose-colored glasses to envision a rapid reversal of the program’s downward spiral. Fortunately, the Paterno family had a pair of them. Coke-bottle-thick, of course.
After a series of agonizingly close defeats, and in the midst of a fourth losing season in five years, the quarterbacks coach was telling whoever would listen, “If we win one game, we might not lose until 2006.”
“Everyone thought I was out of my mind,” Jay Paterno said. “It was just a matter of getting confidence. Confidence changes everything.”
Confidence arrived at the end of a scantly attended battle for the Big 10 basement in Bloomington, Ind. Penn State stuffed four Indiana running plays from the 1-yard line in the closing minutes for a 22-18 win, and it changed everything.
The Nittany Lions are 11-1 since that day, losing only on the last play at Michigan three weeks ago. Starting with a goal-line stand that seemed to augur nothing, a downward spiral has been stunningly and resoundingly reversed.
Penn State seized the momentum from its two-game winning streak to end 2004 last winter. Paterno wasted no time setting the bar very high for 2005.
Jay said that Joe told the team, “I’m not talking about winning six or seven games. I want to win ‘em all.”
As Joe told the media Saturday: “I probably had more confidence that we were close than any of you guys did. Probably more than any of the administration.”
….. “That’s the stuff that really ticks me off most,” Jay Paterno said of the criticism of his father. “I knew Joe could do it. … It’s a family thing. You know how Italians are, they’ve got each other’s backs.
“Loyalty means the world to me. Loyalty means the world to Joe.”
And at this unlikely point, it’s once again Joe Paterno’s world. The rest of us are just living in it — and hoping we have a year like this ourselves when we’re 78.
