JoePa: a life

“Hi, I’m Joe Paterno. I’m a football coach. Not very good.”

Such was my introduction to the legend that is Joe Paterno. I interviewed him in the early ‘90s when he and two-time Heisman winner Archie Griffin appeared at a benefit for Buckeye Boys Ranch (now The Buckeye Ranch), a home for troubled youth in Grove City, Ohio. For not being a very good coach, he sure has built quite a name for himself. Only 23 bowl wins from 34 bowl appearances, and being named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year in 1986 (the first college football coach to win that title), among many other honors.

I had met many prominent people from the sports world during my career as a sports reporter, but it was special to interview Paterno. Why did he come into the middle of Buckeye territory to speak at this awards banquet? Ultimately, to make a difference in people's lives.

"You never know what sticks in somebody's head," he said. "A lot of these kids will say 'Who's this guy with the funny suit and the big nose and the funny glasses?'"

This was 1991--a time where major challenges lay ahead for Penn State, as it had recently been included in the Big Ten.

"I've always felt that one thing I wouldn't get the chance to do is coach in the Rose Bowl--and that still might happen," he said. It happened in 1994 (Penn State won 38-20) and it will happen again this year.

But he didn't want to talk about himself--he wanted to talk about young people.

"I can't imagine where it would be more fun to be young than it is today," he said. "There's no Iron Curtains and no Berlin Walls...We cannot afford to lose another generation of young people. If we blow this thing now, we're never going to have the opportunity again."

For many college football fans, Joe Paterno is the only head coach Penn State has ever had. That’s literally true for me, since he became head coach in 1966—the year I was born.

Imagine working the same job for 42 years. Most people couldn’t imagine this, even if they liked the job. But while many other coaches have come and gone, JoePa has been synonymous with Penn State. His presence is as old-school as the Nittany Lions’ white uniforms, and his dedication to his players and to education has few rivals in college football.

It is hard to picture Penn State football without Paterno, but that will happen soon. We have seen him continue to coach the team from the press box, through several injuries, but how long will it last?

This season would have been a perfect ending to his career. Penn State seemed destined for a perfect season and a national championship, but it all ended with a one-point loss to Iowa last week. (Yet another case for the playoff that JoePa has long favored.) He will probably retire with two college football championships, which is two more than most coaches have.

There’s still an outside chance at the BCS title, but a lot would have to happen. A Rose Bowl win seems more likely. Still, JoePa will be retired soon, and he will take with him a piece of anybody who follows college football.

OSU—What happened?

This year’s BCS Championship Game marked yet another moment of mourning from a lot of people in Ohio and a lot of people outside Ohio.

On paper, Ohio State was the dominant team in college football this season. They rolled through the first 10 games of their season, lost to Rose Bowl-bound Illinois by a touchdown, then beat archrival Michigan 14-3. Take nothing away from LSU, whose two losses were in overtime by a combined eight points.

The best thing that can be said about the Buckeyes’ performance Jan. 7 is that it wasn’t as embarrassing as last year’s 41-10 loss to Florida. Still, for the second year in a row, the Buckeyes of the regular season mysteriously disappeared. College football fans in general—not just Buckeye fans—have to be asking why.

One reason may be the gap between OSU’s last regular season game and the BCS game, and the gap in preparedness that goes with it. OSU played Michigan on Nov. 17—a break of over seven weeks. LSU’s came to the BCS game off a win in the SEC Championship on Dec. 1, giving them five weeks between games. OSU and Florida had a similar inequity the year before. Also note that this year’s Rose Bowl resulted in a USC blowout of Illinois. Illinois’ regular season ended Nov. 17, USC’s on Dec. 1. There are other factors at play, but it’s clear that Big Ten teams aren’t entering bowl games on the same conditional footing as their rivals.

This problem began several years ago, when most of the major collegiate conferences began extending their seasons (and generating more revenue) by holding a year-end championship game after the regular season. The SEC has a championship game. The Big Ten does not. I don’t think a championship game would work in the Big Ten, because, in most years, it would be a reprise of OSU-Michigan (although it would have been OSU-Illinois this year), and there aren’t enough couches in Columbus to burn for that to work.

So, like many other pundits, I am going to invoke the dreaded “p” word. To paraphrase Jim Mora: Playoffs? Playoffs? I’m going to talk to you about playoffs—but not for the reason that most people mention.

In addition to all the talk about determining a college football champion in a “fair” manner (whatever that means), a playoff would be desirable because it would remove the gap between the last regular season game and the BCS championship. If the first playoff game were played during, say, the third weekend in December, the seven-week hiatus would be a thing of the past. Each team would have played the same number games in a reasonable time span.

Let there be a playoff among the top eight or 16 teams in the BCS rankings, with the top bowls affixing their names to a given game in whatever way they can agree upon. There would still be plenty of room on ESPN’s schedule for all the Who Cares Bowls that pit the fourth-place team in the WAC against the third-place team from Conference USA.

When the NCAA rejects a Division I-A playoff, it usually does so by making some ridiculous statement about education (as if Divisions I-AA, II and III, which have playoffs, don’t care about education?). The pre-bowl conditioning gap between conferences should give some schools, such as those in the Big Ten, cause to reconsider.