With the forced retirement of Florida State's Bobby Bowden, there is only one holdover from an era when the best and most enduring of college coaches were larger-than-life figures instantly identifiable with their programs. At 83, Penn State's Joe Paterno is the last of his kind, a symbol of stability and excellence in a profession given over to coaching nomads who tend not to stay long at any one school, by their choice or not.
Paterno is in his 61st season in Happy Valley, his 45th season as head coach of the Nittany Lions. With Saturday evening's nationally televised date at Alabama looming, one might think it would be the perfect occasion for JoePa, whose head-to-head meetings with Bryant's Crimson Tide became the stuff of legend, to take a meandering stroll down memory lane. Paterno is a veritable treasure trove of war stories. He might not remember the names of every one of his current players, but he reaches back to recite down-and-distance of a game situation in a year before today's Nits were born.
But this week apparently is not the time for Paterno to dive into the misty-water-colored memories of the way he was. During his weekly teleconference with the media, someone asked him to recall his rivalry with Bryant, against whom he was 4-8, 5-8 if you include the 1959 Liberty Bowl game in Philadelphia when Paterno was an assistant coach on Rip Engle's staff.
"I'll talk about my relationship with Paul Bryant sometime [next] spring, OK?" Paterno said. "Right now, it's Penn State vs. Alabama. A year from that they stick my picture up. Everybody's going to say, 'Who's the long-nosed guy?' They'll stick Bryant up there with that hat and they'll say, 'Who would wear a funny hat like that these days?'
