Joe Paterno Update
Stewart Mandel has written two recent articles on Penn State coach Joe Paterno, one about the upcoming season and the other about possible eventual replacements. Says Mandel:
The outsider looks at Penn State and sees a fallen program that has won just three of its past 16 Big Ten games, didn’t have a single player drafted last spring and has fielded one of the nation’s most pathetic offenses the past two seasons (103rd out of 117 teams nationally two years ago, 104th last season).
Inside the huddle, however, there is a far more optimistic outlook heading into the 2005 season, and it starts at the top with the iconic 78-year-old at the helm of the Nittany Lions. Rather than focusing on the negatives, Paterno sees a special team that returns nine starters from a defense that ranked fifth in the country last year in points allowed (15.3 per game). Penn State adds two of its most vaunted recruits in recent history, receiver Derrick Williams (Scout.com’s No. 3 receiver last year) and cornerback Justin King (the No. 2 cornerback). Both speedsters participated in spring practices and demonstrated the playmaking ability Paterno’s teams so sorely lacked the past couple of seasons. “We’re not that far off,” said Paterno. “We may have have lacked a couple skill people [last year], but I never felt like, ‘Holy smoke, we’re devastated.’”
Here’s hoping for a big season in Happy Valley. Eventually, though, JoePa will retire and here are Mandel’s picks for his replacement:
- Tom Bradley, currently PSU defensive coordinator
- Butch Davis, former University of Miami and Cleveland Browns coach
- Al Golden, defensive coordinator at Virginia
- Kirk Ferentz, currently head coach at Iowa
- Jay Paterno, PSU quarterbacks coach
No matter what the outcome, I’ll say again that Paterno has been great for Penn State. Mandel says:
Paterno’s first 34 seasons were a portrait of dominance — 31 bowl trips, 18 years of 10 or more wins, five undefeated records and two national championships. But the past five have been an entirely different picture — four losing seasons, a 26-33 overall record and a 3-13 mark in Big Ten games since 2003. It’s not a stretch to say that no other coach of a major program would have survived such a downfall with his job intact, but Paterno — who not only built Penn State into a football powerhouse but, along with his wife, Sue, has donated more than $4 million to the university — has earned the right to exit on his own terms.
Just to make a point here, I got Brenda to check out some books for me from the Physical and Mathematical Sciences Library here at PSU (I’m visiting for a couple of weeks) on solitons. Joe Paterno may not know what a soliton is, but several of the books I looked at were bought with money he donated. It says so on the inside cover.