Only a few football coaches achieve the status of legend in their lifetimes. Knute Rockne, Howard Jones, Fielding Yost, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Bear Bryant, Vince Lombardi. And, of course, Joe Paterno.
In another era, all of them would doubtless be generals. If they had one thing in common, it was their ability to motivate and inspire the troops, to get them to sublimate their welfare to the good of the cause.
They were all different. Though Norwegian-born, Rockne had the wisecracking presence of the Irish. Yost was cerebral, Bear Bryant a grizzly of a man who rumbled when he talked and convinced his forces it was us-against-the-world. Jones was aloof, seigneurial and made it clear he expected nothing less than your best.
Paterno may be the best of them. He came along in an era when you could no longer simply suit up the graduating class or get your line out of the chem lab and play some other coach similarly circumspect. After all, the "Four Horsemen" produced three coaches and a federal judge. Today's backfields sometimes seem to produce more defendants than judges.
On the other hand, Rockne's Old Gipper was ahead of his time, was more what used to be called a "tramp athlete" available to the highest bidder or the school where he could make the most out of the pool hall. George Gipp was a great football player, but a greater poker player.
Still, Paterno is a throwback. His football players do not star in court cases a decade from their prime. His teams graduate--87% one year (compared to a national average of 54%). In the Big Ten, only Northwestern matches Paterno's Penn State record of 80% graduation rate.
He looks more like a nuclear spy than a football coach. Paterno gazes at the world through these thick-lensed glasses and the perpetually perplexed look of a guy who's trying to remember what he did with his keys. He looks lost. He doesn't look threatening at all. Lombardi could terrify you with a growl, Bryant could make you reach to check your wallet, Rockne could make you cry. Paterno looks like a guy waiting for a bus.
The looks are deceiving. Nobody ever was more sure of where he was going and what he was doing than Joe Paterno. There are few secrets in coaching, but what there are, he has.
He speaks in a laryngitic rasp that makes you pay close attention to get what he's saying. But it's worth it. They call him "Joe Pa" back at University Park, Pa., which if you're looking for it, first get a dog. And turn right at Altoona.
