ORANGE

Penn State Coach Joe Paterno gave his players the night off Saturday. Some of them went to see the thoroughbreds run at Calder. Some of them went to the dog track. Some of them went to see jai alai. Nose-tackle Aoatoa Polamalu stayed in his room and watched the Aloha Bowl.

He had a special interest in the game. His brother, Kennedy Pola, plays fullback for USC.

Polamalu, a sophomore who started two games for the Nittany Lions this season, said he might have followed his brother to USC if only the Trojans had recruited him out of Santa Ana Mater Dei.

“I think they thought I was too short,” he said. “I’m 5-11, which is the same as I was in high school. But I heard they thought I was 5-9. It was a miscommunication.”

Polamalu said the only two major schools that offered him scholarships were Penn State and New Mexico.

“I think the other Pac-10 schools assumed I was going to USC,” he said. “Schools like Long Beach, Fullerton and San Diego didn’t recruit me because they figured I was going to a bigger school.”

Polamalu said he became interested in Penn State as a high school sophomore, when the Nittany Lions were recruiting his brother. He said Kennedy also was impressed with Penn State but wanted to stay close to home because their father was seriously ill. He since has died.

When it became apparent that USC wasn’t interested in Aoatoa, known as Al to his teammates, Kennedy called a Penn State coach and asked him to look at his younger brother. Polamalu, who weighs 265, probably will be a regular starter for the Nittany Lions next season.

Like his brother, Aoatoa used the shorter version of his last name, Pola, until after his freshman year at Penn State, when he asked to be called Polamalu.

“I wanted to bring out my real self in my name,” said Aoatoa, whose family is Samoan. “I wanted to be closer to my culture.”

With the University of Miami playing in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Night, Orange Bowl officials were concerned that they wouldn’t have a capacity crowd for their game that same night at Miami between Penn State and Oklahoma.

Their solution was an offer to buy back Orange Bowl tickets from fans who had decided to either to follow the Hurricanes to New Orleans or stay at home and watch them on television.

Orange Bowl officials then re-sold the tickets to Penn State and Oklahoma fans.

As a result, few no-shows are anticipated in the 74,224-seat Orange Bowl.

But Orange Bowl officials still don’t expect to have their crowd’s undivided attention.

“What we’re going to have,” former Orange Bowl Committee President Jimmy Dunn told The Miami Herald, “is a Guinness Book of World Records number of folks showing up with those tiny TV sets.”