Paterno Commits to Class of 2002

Penn State Coach Joe Paterno told some top freshmen this year that he’ll be around until at least 2002.

He may not deliver the same refrain next year.

The 72-year-old Paterno won’t say when he’ll retire. Yet, he wants to coach a minimum of four more seasons -- and says he can’t commit to more.

“I have programmed myself that I want to go through 2001,” Paterno said. “Two years from now if I feel as good as I feel right now and I feel I can put up with the media, I might say two years from now that I want to go four more years.

“But I think realistically for me to say I’m going to coach eight more years, they’re going to say, ‘Take him away.’ ”

Paterno, the oldest college football coach in Division I-A, starts his 33rd season at home against Southern Mississippi on Sept. 5 with a team that some coaches said could finish in the top 10, even with an inexperienced offense.

Paterno helped convince some top recruits this winter to choose Penn State over other schools by telling them that he’ll be their coach until they leave the Nittany Lions.

“Coach Paterno told me he’d be here another five years and that was all I needed to hear,” said R.J. Luke, a tight end from Aurora, Illinois. Luke picked the Nittany Lions over Northwestern and the University of Maryland. “How long Paterno’s going to stay was my only big concern with coming here.”

Although coaches who have recruited against Paterno have said privately that the coach has to assure top recruits that he isn’t retiring to get them to come to State College, Allen Wallace, the editor of recruiting publication SuperPrep said it isn’t a ploy.

“I think he means it,” Wallace said. “I honestly do. There’s no reason for Joe to lie. Most people feel that even when Joe leaves there, there won’t be drastic change.”

The Nittany Lions’ defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, has been at Penn State for 30 years and offensive coordinator Fran Ganter has coached at the school for 27 years. Paterno has said he would expect Ganter or Sandusky to be top candidates to replace him if he retired.

Paterno made in January what university officials called the largest donation a coach has ever made to a school, a $3.5 million gift to Penn State that will be used in part to endow undergraduate scholarships and build a $1 million interfaith spiritual center.

“One of the reasons we decided to give the kind of money we decided to give the university was based on the fact that I would have a certain amount of income for four years,” Paterno said.

Paterno’s package from the school is worth as much as $500,000 a season. In addition to his salary, Paterno has an endorsement agreement with Nike Inc., a weekly radio show during the season and several commercial endorsements.

Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, 68, who also is entering his 33rd season as a coach, said he wouldn’t tell a recruit to sign with the Seminoles if he didn’t expect to coach for the next five years. At top football schools, some freshman are red-shirted, which allows them to sit out a season and keep four years of eligibility remaining.

“I told the boys I recruited last year, ‘If I couldn’t sit here and tell you that I planned to be back in five years, I wouldn’t try to recruit you.”’ Bowden said. “When I can’t tell them that, I’ve got to get out.”

Paterno arrived in State College in 1950 as an assistant on Rip Engle’s staff, three years before Jim Brown ever carried the football for Syracuse University. He took over the program from Engle after the 1965 season.

Paterno, who will be 73 in December, has the most wins of all active college football coaches. He has 298 victories, 35 behind the late Bear Bryant of Alabama, who has the most in Division I-A history.

Shamar Finney, a 6-foot-3, 245-pound high school All-American linebacker from Shelby, North Carolina, said Paterno promised not to leave before he finishes school. Matt Senneca, a 6-foot-4, 215-pound quarterback from Allentown, Pennsylvania, said Paterno told him that he wasn’t retiring.

“When I came here he told me not to worry, that he would be here as long as I was,” Senneca said.

With running back Curtis Enis leaving early as a first-round draft choice of the Chicago Bears and starting quarterback Mike McQueary graduating, Penn State is projected to finish behind Michigan and Ohio State in the Big Ten.

While Paterno has little, if anything, left to prove on the field, winning national championships at Penn State in 1982 and 1986, Bill Curry, a former coach at Alabama and Kentucky, said he doesn’t see the Penn State legend leaving the game any time soon.

“What Joe has realized is that leaving isn’t going to enhance the program,” said Curry, a college football analyst for ESPN. “And as a grandfather, how long can you crawl around with a three-year-old before you want to go to work. He’s got too much energy.”