Woodruff Reaches Milestone

Singer Rucker at top of game review

Times Leader columnist and Penn State writer Jerry Kellar caught up with Joe Paterno in 1998.
 
 TIMES LEADER FILE PHOTO 
 

 

Editor&rsquo;s note: Joe Paterno, 85, died Sunday. He was a coach at Penn State since 1950, becoming head coach in 1966. He led the Nittany Lions to a Division I/FBS record 409 victories in his career, which ended in November. The Hall of Fame coach had a record of 409-136-3, won 24 of the 37 bowl games his teams appeared in, and claimed two national championships. He devoted countless hours and dollars to the university and its students outside of the venues of sport.
He was interviewed by The Times Leader&rsquo;s then-Penn State beat writer, the late Jerry Kellar, for an exclusive which was originally published Aug. 16, 1998.
We wish to share with you this interview once again.
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Joe Paterno hasn&rsquo;t achieved his status in life by adjusting his busy schedule to the convenience of others.
So when college&rsquo;s football&rsquo;s winningest living Division I-A coach (298-77-3) agreed to spend some rare free time with sports writer Jerry Kellar at the recent Big Ten Conference kickoff festivities -- even though it was smack dab in the middle of the morning&rsquo;s press conferences -- Kellar grabbed his pad, pen and tape recorder and followed sports information director Jeff Nelson to the nearest lounge to meet the coach.
In an exclusive 25-minute interview, Penn State&rsquo;s 71-year-old football legend revealed his thoughts on a number of issues, including: his approaching 300th victory (actually, he&rsquo;d rather talk about anything else), retirement (only grudgingly), salary (why do you ask?), longevity in the game (it&rsquo;s more than luck) and the ever-increasing demands on his time ("Like this," he said.)
Paterno, who is beginning his 49th season at Penn State, 33rd as head coach, also touched on his relationship with today&rsquo;s players, family life, political correctness, the infamous fund-raising dinner in Wilkes-Barre, politics, the ills of society and, of course, his Nittany Lion football team.
Though short in time, the meeting was entertaining, revealing and enlightening.
Hopefully, you&rsquo;ll feel the same.
* * *
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TIMES LEADER: OK, We might as well get this out of the way quick. Eleven years ago, after career win No. 200, you said you&rsquo;d never make it to 300. And here we are, just two away.

JOE PATERNO: (Shaking head) I&rsquo;m not even thinking about it. I&rsquo;m just worried about Southern Mississippi, to be very honest with you. We lost the last two and three of the last five football games we played last year. We gotta get back to playing better football. And personal goals really right now are not very important. We&rsquo;re just trying to be a good football team again. So what happens happens.

TL: Your colleagues marvel at your staying power in the job. So what&rsquo;s the secret to spending almost a half-century doing the same job, at the same place?

PATERNO: Well, I think anybody when he starts out coaching thinks he&rsquo;s going to be able to stay in one place as long as I&rsquo;ve been or stay in coaching as long as I&rsquo;ve been is a real optimist. But it&rsquo;s been fun and it&rsquo;s been enjoyable and I&rsquo;ve been lucky. I&rsquo;ve had good health, had some good genes from my parents. I married a wonderful woman who&rsquo;s made it possible for me to do it and I&rsquo;ve had good family support. So all of those things, the combination of things have put me in the situation where I am right now. And that&rsquo;s one I&rsquo;m thoroughly enjoying and looking forward to.

TL: Has your retirement become more of an issue with recruits?

PATERNO: Well, I think it&rsquo;s important that I have some ideas as to how far along I can coach, because I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s fair to the university or the staff or the people who may have some interest in playing at Penn State. But right now if you said to me `How long you going to coach?&rsquo; I&rsquo;m going to tell you I&rsquo;m going to coach four years. Two years from now, if I feel as healthy as I do now and as enthusiastic about coaching as I do and I&rsquo;m enjoying it as much, I may coach another four, five. But I think right now it be unrealistic for me to say I&rsquo;m going to coach six, seven, eight more years. Four more years right now would put me at 75 and I&rsquo;d have to take a good, tough look at getting out of it at that time. But I&rsquo;ll repeat it, if two more years from now if I feel as good as I do right now I may &rsquo;til I&rsquo;m 77, 78, I don&rsquo;t know. I have no real plans, except for the fact that I do want to make people understand where I&rsquo;m coming from.

TL: You said following the Citrus Bowl loss to Florida that you were going to get back to basics with the team. The last time you said those words was in &rsquo;92 after the loss to Stanford in the Blockbuster Bowl. Are there any similarities between those squads and do seasons like those cause you to reevaluate things?

PATERNO: I don&rsquo;t feel that way so much about last year&rsquo;s team as I did back when Stanford gave us such a bad licking in the Blockbuster Bowl. We played hard against Florida. We went in there with a lot of problems, we lost probably our two best offensive players. We played solid against an outstanding football team. Michigan State ... I don&rsquo;t know what happened to us. I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s a question of what we&rsquo;ve done or anything like that, it&rsquo;s just a question or maybe tightening up some things, re-adjusting and maybe a little better leadership. But I don&rsquo;t feel as if we&rsquo;re out of it. We, meaning Joe Paterno.

TL: The age gap obviously keeps widening between you and the players. Is it becoming increasingly more difficult to adapt to today&rsquo;s kids?

PATERNO: Not really. Unfortunately I got married late. I still have a kid in college. I&rsquo;ve been around young people all the time. Even when I was getting older my kids were younger. When I was in my 60s, I had teenagers all over the place. They had friends in the house. So I never really lost contact with what&rsquo;s going on. I don&rsquo;t really feel that I&rsquo;m out of touch with them. I think it&rsquo;s more of a challenge because it&rsquo;s such a tougher life for these kids. There&rsquo;s so many people that want to get into their lives. You really gotta counsel them a little bit more and you&rsquo;ve got to be aware of the environment they&rsquo;re in ... the agents, the girls, the media hype the minute they step out of line. There&rsquo;s no coverup. Years ago, if kids did a little something you could say, hey leave it alone. You can&rsquo;t do that anymore. The slightest thing now gets blown up. So those things take more time to make sure a kid understands how prominent he is. But other than that I think I&rsquo;m in fairly good touch with the kids.

TL: You and Sue have been so generous with your money over the years (earlier this year the Paternos donated $3.5 million to the university), yet you are extremely protective of your salary. It almost seems as if you&rsquo;re guilty over what you make. Is that fair to say?

PATERNO: No, I don&rsquo;t feel guilty about it, but I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s anybody&rsquo;s business. When we gave the money away, we did not want to announce it because we didn&rsquo;t think it was appropriate. But the people in the development office thought it would be helpful to them to go out and talk to other people about raising their sights as to what they would give, so we announced it.

TL: You looked genuinely uncomfortable at the press conference that day.

PATERNO: Well, we didn&rsquo;t want to make a big deal of it. I&rsquo;ve always said I never got into coaching to make money, and I honestly mean that. I have made more money than I should make for doing what I love to do. I just felt like we should give some of it back.

TL: I&rsquo;m sure it helps that you have a wife who shares your values.

PATERNO: You bet. We&rsquo;ve been very careful. Sue and I spend very little money. As I&rsquo;ve said many times, Sue presses all my clothes ... we never have a tailor bill, we never have a laundry bill. She cooks all the food. I mean, she made clothes for the kids when they were young. We&rsquo;ve been careful, some people have given us some good advice about investments. So all of a sudden you wake up and you&rsquo;ve got some money. A lot of that is because the university&rsquo;s been good to me, a lot of that&rsquo;s because we&rsquo;ve been very careful. We&rsquo;ve not been stingy, but we&rsquo;ve been careful. So I don&rsquo;t have any ... I&rsquo;m not embarrassed about what I make. I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s anybody&rsquo;s business.

TL: You&rsquo;ve cut back dramatically on offseason personal appearances and engagements this year. Did you feel you were losing touch with the squad?

PATERNO: Not necessarily, but just like this (interview), people want to talk about 300 wins, how long you&rsquo;re going to coach. You come to functions like this and now you end up doing this, you&rsquo;ve gotta do an ESPN interview. It&rsquo;s always something. I came here yesterday, really I didn&rsquo;t have to be here. They had a coaches meeting yesterday. It was a waste of time. I mean every day you&rsquo;re away ... a good friend of ours is having his 80th birthday on Saturday, so we&rsquo;re flying to New York. I have kids looking for jobs that want to make switches, you&rsquo;re making telephone calls. Some days you&rsquo;re in the office and you&rsquo;ve got six, seven telephone calls to make -- all of which you want to make -- but none of them have anything to do with football. Not recruiting, anything.

TL: What kind of requests do you normally get from former players and coaches?

PATERNO: So and so&rsquo;s in Chicago, he wants to move to New York, he needs to get an interview with so and so who knew me. Can you call? I had an interview with this guy. Would you sign a picture and send it to the guy because he&rsquo;s a Penn State fan? It&rsquo;s those kinds of things. And the more people you&rsquo;re associated with over a period of time, the more those demands are.

TL: You have a hard time saying no to people, don&rsquo;t you?

PATERNO: Well, you can&rsquo;t say no to your players.

TL: People can be pretty demanding at times, can&rsquo;t they?

PATERNO: (Nods) You like to do as much as you can, but it&rsquo;s tough. If there&rsquo;s a sick kid or something like that, or somebody feels you can do something to help because of the fact that people recognize you, well, I think that&rsquo;s an obligation. But it does make the job a little tougher.

TL: In one of the few offseason appearances you did make, you helped raise more than $80,000 for the Wyoming Valley CYC. And you ended up getting grilled over the coals for telling an ethnic joke.

PATERNO: (Smiles) Ah, that didn&rsquo;t bother me. I think that was just ... a couple people got carried away. The timing was bad. I certainly never meant to offend or hurt anybody. I think people who know me know that certainly ... I don&rsquo;t think I have a biased bone in my body. I hope I don&rsquo;t.

TL: To my knowledge, the few people who complained weren&rsquo;t even at the dinner. My newspaper called you insensitive and implied you were a hypocrite. Were you hurt by that?

PATERNO: No. But I&rsquo;m disturbed that our society&rsquo;s gotten so touchy that you can&rsquo;t have some fun with each other. I mean, there&rsquo;s some friends of mine, Italian-American people, who are very touchy about any kind of Mafia jokes and things like that. And I say, hey, if we can&rsquo;t make fun of ourselves we&rsquo;ve really lost touch. I suppose it&rsquo;s a sign of the tension that we have in society today. So it didn&rsquo;t bother me in the sense that it hurt me, but it makes me wonder where we&rsquo;re going.

TL: Lots of politically incorrect people think we&rsquo;re going to the dogs. Are we taking ourselves too seriously these days?

PATERNO: Absolutely. I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s any question about that. I think there&rsquo;s too many people making a living out of being associated with causes. We have too many extremes. There&rsquo;s people that are trying to understand what one group&rsquo;s problem is and understand what the other end&rsquo;s problem is, and they&rsquo;re trying to get people together and have a little fun doing it. Humor in the long run is usually what saves us.

TL: Society is changing for the worse. Even little State College isn&rsquo;t immune from so-called big city problems anymore.

PATERNO: Yeah, we had the riots up there (earlier this summer), which obviously none of us are very happy about. It was a very unfortunate incident. But we don&rsquo;t have a lot of that. And most of the kids we get come to Penn State because they&rsquo;ve got a choice between Penn State and someplace else where there&rsquo;s a city life and a subculture and some of those problems. And maybe when kids opt to go to Penn State, they&rsquo;ve got a different attitude towards what they want out of college.

TL: You love to talk politics. When and if you retire from coaching, any interest in running?

PATERNO: I have interest in politics but not to run. I might have 20 years ago, but not right now. I think to go into politics you really have to know who you&rsquo;re going to take with you. I don&rsquo;t have enough ... somebody would say run for governor. Sure, OK, run for governor. Who do I appoint secretary of education? Who do I appoint this, who do I pick for that? Well, we&rsquo;ll tell you. Yeah, sure you&rsquo;ll tell me. That&rsquo;s not the way I would run. That&rsquo;s not my style.

TL: (Purdue coach) Joe Tiller called you a phenomenon. How would you like to be remembered some day?

PATERNO: (Looking oh-so disinterested) Ah, that&rsquo;s for you guys to decide.

Jerry Kellar’s Exclusive ’98 Interview With Paterno