Quite simply, Paterno was the face of the university, not only running a successful football program in which he won a record 409 games, but also projecting a grandfatherly aura over a campus that has expanded exponentially in his 61 years in Happy Valley.
O'Brien, who at 42 is actually three years older than Paterno was when the iconic coach succeeded Rip Engle, has a challenge. But as he told everyone during his introductory news conference on Jan. 7, "I'm not here to be Joe Paterno. There's only one Joe Paterno."
"Joe did it to perfection," Bobby Bowden, who won 389 games as a head coach, the last 34 years at Florida State, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "So the next man coming in has got to follow that, and it's very tough standards to stick to."
Bowden, 82, said he once heard a saying at the time Paul "Bear" Bryant was about to be replaced at Alabama: "I don't want to follow him, I want to follow the guy that follows him.
"Take all of them," he said, mentioning Bryant, Paterno, and Texas' Darrell Royal. "The guy after them has a very difficult time. Now, some of them have been able to do it. But it's tough to follow somebody like Joe because they expect you to do just as well, and it's hard to do."
Bryant won 323 games in his career, the most of any major-college coach until Paterno broke his record in 2001. He captured 232 of those victories in 25 years at Alabama, where he won six national championships before he retired in 1982. He died 28 days after coaching his last game.
Here is an eerie coincidence: Bryant's successor, Ray Perkins, did not coach his first game until after Bryant had died. O'Brien won't be making his Penn State debut until more than seven months after the passing of Paterno, who died 85 days after his final game on Oct. 29 against Illinois.
