UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — He still doesn't get it, all the camera lenses focusing on him on media day. Joe Paterno stands in the noonday August sun in Beaver Stadium, arms folded at midfield, striking one what-am-I-doing-here? pose after another.
Men and women with notebooks have traipsed the Alleghenies to pay homage, yet Paterno has put out word that he isn't interested in homage.
"When I'm dead, it'll be fine," he has said.
But the cameramen and reporters don't go away.
Looking perplexed, Paterno ambles over to one writer in particular.
"You came all the way out from L.A. to see me?" he says with the slightest suggestion of guilt.
Really, what scant interest might there be in a man who, with a victory over Bowling Green on Saturday in Happy Valley, will become the sixth college football coach to win 300 games?
Why is Paterno so special for having done it all at one school, without having been on NCAA probation, without fanfare, without names on uniforms, without one hatchet-for-every-tackle decal plastered on helmets, without a pair of trousers that ever touched his shoelaces?
What would possess a newspaper to waste ink on a skinny Brooklyn kid headed to Brown Law School in 1950 when the new coach at Pennsylvania State University asked Paterno if he'd like to help out for the summer?
And that the temporary job has stretched to 48 years and counting?
What is so inspiring about an English literature major who has imparted on his players the writings of Robert Browning, "Man's reach should exceed his grasp," and Thomas Aquinas, "Anticipation was the greater joy."?
Who among us would care that Paterno is bet-the-farm assuredly the only college football coach in America who has read most of the novels on Random House's recent top 100 list, among them No. 4 "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov?
"Some people thought it was a dirty book," Paterno says. "I thought it was insight to somebody with a problem."
Or that last spring, while sportswriters were cracking the seal on "Street and Smith's" Paterno was revisiting Ibsen?
Or that, between novels, Paterno has produced two national championship teams, four other squads that were unbeaten but uncrowned, a 299-77-3 record, 53 first-team All-Americans, 20 academic All-Americans and 23 first-round NFL draft choices?
Or that he has won more bowl games, 18, than any coach living or dead?
