John Walters

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - "OK, guys, let's go so I can get home and go to bed."

It is just after 8 p.m. on Saturday. Joe Paterno, two months shy of his 82nd birthday, rests his cane against the wall and pulls up a chair before an assembled press corps in the bowels of Beaver Stadium. Occasionally the Penn State head coach pulls out a plain white handkerchief from his blue windbreaker and dabs his nose with it, then carefully folds it and places it back into a pocket.

From behind a pair of bank-teller-window thick lenses he peers out at the media members, at least half of whom were not born when Paterno won his first game as a head coach in 1966, a 15-7 defeat of Maryland.

Minutes earlier, the Nittany Lions had beaten Big Ten rival Michigan to give Paterno his 380th career win, the most in Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) history. Bobby Bowden, the 78-year-old coach at Florida State, trails JoePa by two victories with 378.

"You keep asking me how good our football team is," says Paterno after Penn State had scored 39 unanswered points in a 46-17 triumph. "The answer is, I dunno. We’ll find out this week obviously."

This week. No. 3 Penn State (8-0) visits No. 9 Ohio State (7-1) in Columbus, Ohio. The Nittany Lions have lost seven straight at the Horseshoe, the last victory coming in 1978. Then again, before last Saturday, Penn State had lost nine in a row to Michigan.

"Now, that streak’s a little bit deceiving," he says. "Some crazy things happened in that streak."

Paterno is alluding to the game in Ann Arbor three years ago, when the white helmets were undone by a Wolverine touchdown pass as the clock expired. That loss would be Penn State’s lone blemish in 2005, denying JoePa of his eighth perfect regular season since he succeeded his mentor — and college coach at Brown — Rip Engle. For the record, Penn State’s seven perfect regular seasons since 1966 lead all schools, with Miami, Nebraska and Ohio State trailing closely with six.

This Saturday, Penn State faces it tallest hurdle in the way of an eighth unbeaten regular season under Paterno. The top 10 showdown will be reminiscent of the '78 contest, when No. 5 Penn State shut out the No. 6 Buckeyes, 19-0. The victory came in the midst of Paterno’s third perfect regular season in Happy Valley.

"I have the program from that game framed in my office," says Jay Paterno (given name Joe Paterno, Jr.), the Penn State quarterbacks coach. "It's a classic. Joe and Woody Hayes are on the cover."

Woody Hayes.

That '78 season ended for Penn State with a 14-7 loss in the Sugar Bowl — what amounted to the national championship game — to Alabama and Bear Bryant. Still, it was Paterno's third unbeaten regular season in his first 13 years with the Nittany Lions. Among Paterno's contemporaries, no coach — not Pete Carroll, not Jim Tressel, not Bob Stoops, not Phil Fulmer — can boast as many perfect regular seasons at his current school.

Then again, how comical is the term "Paterno’s contemporaries?" Are Carroll and Tressel his contemporaries? Is Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema, who was born after Paterno's fifth season at Penn State and whose Badgers have lost to the Nittany Lions by a combined 86-14 score the past two seasons after an insult-and-injury victory in Madison in 2006, a contemporary? Or are Hayes and Bryant, both of whom passed on more than two decades ago?

Amos Alonzo Stagg coached until he was 84, but the University of Chicago forced him into retirement after 31 seasons in 1932 at age 70. It is worth noting — and perhaps a historic meeting took place — that when Paterno began as an assistant coach at Penn State in 1950, Stagg was the co-head coach with his son at Susquehanna University just an hour east.

When Clemson coach Tommy Bowden stepped down last week, he became the 818th head coach in FBS circles to come and go during Paterno’s tenure. Truly only Tommy’s dad, three years younger and two wins behind, is Paterno's peer.

Paterno, whose salt-and-pepper mat of hair is still thicker than that of most men half his age, soldiers on. This season, however, he has at last made concessions to his octogenarian status. After demonstrating an onside kick in fall camp, Paterno’s hip began to bother him. Now he no longer walks around at practice, instead riding shotgun in a golf cart that is driven by director of football operations Tom Venturino, who is in his 25th season with Paterno.

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