Penn State’s Paterno Commuting Between NCAA, Coaches’ Meetings

Penn State Coach Joe Paterno, who has been riding cabs back and forth between the Town and Country Hotel, where the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s annual convention is being held, and the Sheraton, where the American Football Coaches Assn. convention is being held, made several round trips Thursday.

At noon he was with the coaches, being named the Kodak coach of the year for a record fourth time. Paterno’s team was 12-0 this season and beat Miami in the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl for the national title, and yet he said that the Kodak award was the highlight of his year because the voting was done by his peers.

Earlier in the week, his peers had heard him speak on the topic, “What I Have Learned in 37 Years of Coaching.” Thursday, they were more interested to hear his report and opinion on what had happened across town.

Paterno and Georgia Coach Vince Dooley, who is also his school’s athletic director, are among the few coaches who are also delegates to the convention.

But the subjects being considered at the convention are crucial to the coaches and to major college football.

Paterno said he was very much relieved to hear the opening statements made by Chancellor Michael Heyman of California Thursday morning.

Paterno said: “I was concerned that the presidents were going to become experts in intercollegiate athletics and tell us what to do. From what I heard this morning, he sounded like the presidents don’t want to get into specifics.

“They have some goals in mind, but they are throwing out a challenge to us to come back with specifics on what we think will work. We have some time now to communicate with our college presidents what we think is reasonable.”

Asked if he agreed with the premise of the Presidents Commission that athletics were out of balance with academics and other programs of the institutions, Paterno said: “We’re using rhetorical cliches now. I’m not hearing specifics. If they say to us there’s an imbalance, I’d like to know how, when, where and why they think that, and then allow us to fix it without damaging our athletic departments.”

As a group, the coaches are concerned about some items of legislation that are being considered this week and about many that will be considered this summer in the special convention.

The AFCA board of trustees came out unanimously opposed to moves to reduce football coaching staffs and to affect scholarship limits, coaches’ outside income and limitations on spring practice. The board also took a stand against the idea of making freshmen ineligible.

Paterno thinks it’s a good idea to make freshmen ineligible but he admitted, “All my buddies would shoot me for saying that.”

Paterno has always been in favor of letting freshmen concentrate on classes. He’s a strong supporter of academic interests.

Later Thursday afternoon, Paterno was back on the convention floor, speaking in favor of a proposal that would require athletes to meet certain progressive grade-point averages year after year in order to remain eligible. He told the delegates that the coaches backed the proposal, but it failed anyway.

Arizona State Coach John Cooper, a member of the coaches’ board, said that many of the coaches had been unaware, before arriving here this week, of the legislation being considered and the impact it could have. He said that if some of them were asked what they thought of the plan to eliminate a football coach from the staff, their response would be: “They want to eliminate a coach? Is that right?”

Cooper said: “We need to do some lobbying, but the lobbying we need to do is back home, with our own presidents and faculty. We have to make them understand how these things will affect us.”

The coaches had opposed cutting football scholarships from 30 each year to 25, but that passed Thursday morning.

Cooper said that, having fewer scholarships to offer, coaches will be even more careful about which athletes they sign.

“It means we’ve got to make sure that we don’t make any mistakes,” Cooper said. “We’d better get 25 good ones.”

Other Kodak award winners among coaches were Erk Russell of Georgia Southern in Division I-AA; Earle Solomonson of North Dakota State in NCAA Division II and NAIA Division I, and Bob Reade of Illinois Augustana College in Division III and NAIA Division II.