Equal Time

By CHRIS DUFRESNE

Oct. 21, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

EVANSTON, Ill. —

It was one Bear of a game, any way you looked at it, and at the end Penn State Coach Joe Paterno took off sprinting like a rock star running to catch his private jet.

In history, Penn State victories against Northwestern would hardly be considered seminal. When the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten in 1993, an independent powerhouse looking to hitch its helmet to a conference, a win against then-lowly Northwestern would have been expected.

Yet, Saturday, before a less-than-sellout crowd of 42,512 at Ryan Field, Penn State defeated Northwestern, 38-35, in a game Paterno would call one of his most satisfying in 36 years as head coach.

It wasn’t because, with the victory, Paterno at last notched career victory No. 323 to tie Paul “Bear” Bryant on the major college all-time victory list.

The win was important because it proved, for at least a day, that Paterno could still engage an opponent with the ferocity that led to 322 previous victories.

“This was one of the real good ones I’ve been around and one of the most important,” Paterno said of the game.

Penn State improved barely to 1-4 with the win, and is only 7-14 since starting the 1999 season 9-0.

Saturday was a last-stand game, a burst of bravado from a coach who needed some tether to grab or risk losing his team and his program.

Yes, it was that tenuous.

Penn State entered the game with the nation’s worst-ranked offense, one that averaged 1.5 yards per rushing play, and a defense ranked 109 out of 115 Division I teams.

But this was a different team altogether. These Nittany Lions gained more yards rushing in one game, 213, than they had totaled in four previous losses.

This team, pushed to the brink of defeat when Northwestern went ahead, 35-31, on Zak Kustok’s quarterback sneak with 2:03 left, pushed back, racing 69 yards on 13 plays to score the winning touchdown on freshman Zack Mills’ four-yard scoring pass with 22 seconds left.

Zack outlasted Zak.

Paterno called the play himself, then had to wiggle and squirm on the ensuing kickoff.

Paterno ordered a squib--”Dumb call!” Paterno lamented later--that gave Northwestern one last chance to set up a possible tying field goal.

But time ran out for the Wildcats short of field-goal range, and the celebration was on.

That Mills led Penn State’s final touchdown drive was pure irony. Paterno, historically, has hated playing freshman quarterbacks.

Mills, though, was forced into the game with 1:38 left when starter Matt Senneca was knocked out after getting hit by linebacker Napoleon Harris.

Mills, who warmed up while trainers attended to Senneca, completed five of eight passes for 54 yards, his last for the winning score.

Asked about throwing the winning touchdown pass to secure victory No. 323 for Paterno, Mills said, “It was an honor, a privilege.”

Victory against No. 22 Northwestern (4-2), however, only put on pause a saga that has not yet played itself out.

It does not change that Penn State got off to its worst start in its 115-year history this year, or that this team and this program have issues.

“We’re not there yet,” Paterno said, “but we needed something like this.”

All season, literary wolves stalked the woods around Happy Valley forming words to describe Paterno’s imminent decline.

Joe Paterno getting fired was never the issue. His status inoculated him from that talk-radio-driven, trigger-happy option.

“We want Joe to end it the way he wants to see it end,” Steve MacCarthy, Penn State’s vice president of university relations, said before the game.

No, the fear was that Paterno couldn’t make the retirement call himself. The fear is he might become Eddie Robinson, college football’s all-time winningest coach with 408 victories, whose legendary program at Grambling faded as Robinson’s grip on the program did.

Robinson coached until he was 78, but his last few seasons were almost sad. Robinson’s decision not to bow out gracefully caused friction among some former Grambling players and created a rift that was not becoming of the legacy.

“Obviously, when Joe retires, we want to see him go out in a blaze of glory,” MacCarthy said.

But when is when?

Paterno turns 75 in December, yet insists he is not remotely approaching the end.

After the game, Paterno sprinted to the Ryan Field tunnel and shook his fist into the stands, but it could have also been a taunt at Father Time.

Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden mused he might retire if he ever lost three consecutive games, yet Paterno proved Saturday he is more engaged than many coaches in the country, including his colorful counterpart in Tallahassee.

“Bobby coaches differently than I do,” Paterno said this week on the Big Ten coaches’ teleconference. “I don’t go out [to practice] in a cart and I don’t have a tower. I would very much miss coaching. I would really miss it. Having said that, I don’t want to be so stupid that if I can’t do it, that I am going to hurt our football team. I owe too much to Penn State and I owe too much to these kids for me to go out there and be sloppy and do a lousy job. The minute I think I am doing that, I will get out.

“I don’t feel that way.”

He didn’t look that way Saturday.

Having two weeks to prepare for Northwestern, Paterno pulled out all stops. He moved struggling wide receiver Eddie Drummond to tailback and watched Drummond rush for 37 yards in six carries. Paterno also employed the Power-I backfield, admitting he reached back to a 1970 game plan for inspiration.

“That last play proved he hasn’t lost it, even though a lot of people think he really has,” Mills said of the game-winning touchdown pass.

Publicly, opposing coaches have been deferential to Paterno in this season of struggle, but this is a man who has taken no quarter in winning 323 games against only 94 defeats in 35-plus seasons.

“There’s not pity, trust me,” one Big Ten recruiting coordinator said before the game. “Nobody’s feeling sorry for Joe Paterno, I assure you. Not one teeny bit do I feel sorry for Penn State. Nor would they for us. Coaches are competitive. We all have our problems when we have down years.”

So how did it get to this, that a victory against Northwestern in mid-October would rank on the top shelf for a man who has 20 bowl victories?

How did it happen that a team that finished 10-3 two years ago would celebrate improving to 1-4?

How could Penn State, which two years went to Miami and beat the Hurricanes in a last-minute thriller, look so inept in this year’s 33-7 season opening loss to Miami in State College?

How could a program famous for its generic-brand discipline and brutish running game average only 41 yards rushing entering weekend play?

There are prevailing theories:

* Age. Opposing recruiters have been telling high school players for years Paterno won’t be around for long.

Guess what, it’s suddenly true.

“Predictably, it’s gotten to this point,” Matt Millen, the former Penn State linebacker, said. “Inevitably, you’re only as strong as the kids you bring in. There’s only so much scheme you can do, so much tradition does, all those things. And it’s apparent that in the last three years he doesn’t have the people.”

Fair assessment?

Some working the recruiting trenches have not found that to be the case.

“If they want a kid and we want them, they get him,” the Big Ten recruiting coordinator said. “I’ve heard the same tone from everybody, well, Joe quit recruiting, their players are bad. But I’m telling you, the ones we battled them on, he got.”

* Stubbornness. Few could say that Paterno is being outcoached or outfoxed, but some say he is out of touch in one important respect: He disdains playing freshmen. Paterno tends a team the way one would a garden--from the roots up. He likes to redshirt his young players and allow them to grow. This philosophy has served him wonderfully for four decades. Except, now, kids aren’t buying it. The want to play right away.

“They don’t even list freshmen in the yearbook, which is ridiculous,” Tom Lemming, a respected Midwest recruiting guru, said. “When he started coaching, freshmen weren’t even allowed to play, so that’s his philosophy. But that’s probably one of the few characteristics of being a dinosaur, because he’s really up on most everything else.”

And while it was a freshman, Mills, who tossed the game-winning score to beat Northwestern, Senneca, a junior, got the start.

* Philosophy. The Nittany Lions lock up too many recruits early instead of waiting until the February signing date.

The problem: Most premier players hold out on a school decision until the very end.

“That philosophy has really turned on them,” Lemming said. “You don’t blame them for taking LaVar Arrington and Courtney Brown early, those were great takes, but the majority of takes have been good, not difference-maker players.”

A prime example of this philosophy-turned-bad is Jeff Smoker, a highly touted quarterback who wanted to sign with Penn State but did not want to commit early.

Penn State backed off and Smoker signed with Michigan State.

Lemming said had Penn State waited on Smoker, he likely would have signed and been the Nittany Lions’ starting quarterback this weekend.

According to SuperPrep, Penn State has had the 30th-and 21st-rated recruiting classes the last two seasons.

* Joining the Big Ten. Mistake? After years of success as a football independent, Penn State joined in 1993.

Becoming part of the conference was a boon academically, and afforded Penn State built-in access to bowls, including the Rose.

However, Big Ten membership also subjected Penn State to stiffer competition, on the playing and recruiting fields.

“It was a mistake,” Lemming said. “They played a lot of patsies as an independent that you always counted on as wins. Now, you don’t play the Temples, and Rutgers, the weaker teams. And it hasn’t helped in recruiting. They haven’t made any inroads at all in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin. Some in Ohio, but they always had that in Ohio.

“Michigan? Nothing.”

According to SuperPrep, Michigan nabbed three of this year’s top six prospects out of Pennsylvania.

Penn State has also lost some ground in New Jersey to Virginia Tech and Miami.

The Nittany Lions lost Pennsylvania tailback Kevin Jones to Virginia Tech, where he starts as a freshman.

Paterno wrote Jones a three-page letter, in part asking why a kid from Pennsylvania would sign with Virginia Tech.

Jones kept the letter as a keepsake but signed with the Hokies.

Penn State also lost out on defensive lineman Leon Williams, who committed to Penn State but signed with Miami.

“It probably would have been better to join the Big East,” Lemming said of Penn State. “They could have kept their [New Jersey] recruiting base and played weaker teams.”

The Big Ten argument does not wash if you’re dissecting the raw data.

Penn State was 74-23 in its first eight years in the Big Ten and 71-24 in the eight previous years as an independent.

Some, though, think the Big Ten move has had a cumulative effect. Penn State has captured only one conference title, in 1994, and is headed for its worst finish after ending up fifth the last three years.

Penn State officials say they don’t regret the move.

“The university feels joining the Big Ten was one of the best things it ever did,” MacCarthy said. “There are no regrets whatsoever. It is true to say the Big Ten schedule can be a pretty brutal one.”

So what should we make of Saturday’s win? Was it the start of Paterno’s comeback or only one win in what could still be a long season?

The glint in Paterno’s eye would suggest he has caught magic again, that he has proved the naysayers wrong.

For Paterno, this wasn’t about living up to the standard set by Bryant.

This was about living up to the standard Paterno set for Paterno.

“Sure, it means a lot,” Paterno said of tying Bryant’s record. “If I got it, fine. If I didn’t get it, I wouldn’t have worried about it.”

There are other worries on the horizon, but Paterno would allow himself a moment to reflect on win No. 323.

“I’m going to go home, have a good stiff bourbon,” Paterno said. “Then I’ll take a couple-hour nap, wake up and start looking at some Ohio State tapes.”

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Pulling Into a Tie

Penn State’s 38-35 victory Saturday over No. 22 Northwestern allowed Joe Paterno to reach a coaching milestone:

All-Time Leaders in Division I-A Coaching Victories:

1t Bear Bryant: 323

1t x-Joe Paterno: 323

3t Pop Warner: 319

3t x-Bobby Bowden: 319

5. Amos Alonzo Stagg: 314

6t Tom Osborne: 255

6t LaVell Edwards: 255

8. Woody Hayes: 238