No Average Joe, but It’s Time to Go

Knot-in-the-stomach uneasiness grows over the steady decline of Penn State football and, more important, what to do about it.

At most big-time programs, a coach who has gone 24-32 since 2000 would not be around to discuss the prospects of a turnaround.

Florida fired Ron Zook with four games left this year after he dared to go 20-13 in two-plus seasons.

Washington Coach Keith Gilbertson fell on his sword Monday, announcing his retirement three games in advance of his imminent ouster.

Coaches at Washington are not allowed to go 1-7 ... ever.

There is protocol for firing coaches in the 21st century.

You do it early -- Columbus Day, Halloween -- to get the jump on the competition for available coaches, which brings us to the agonizing case of Penn State.

If Joe Blow were coach there, he would have been ushered out by now as the school tried to make first back-channel contact with Utah Coach Urban Meyer.

Joe Blow is not Penn State’s coach -- Joe Paterno is.

Paterno is probably the greatest college football coach ever. You could argue Bear Bryant or Pop Warner or Eddie Robinson or Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden, although even Bowden says it’s Paterno.

Paterno is in his 55th year at Penn State, his 39th as head coach. He turns 78 in December.

He has had only five losing seasons in 39 years, but four of those have been since 2000.

His offense ranks 94th in the country, immediately below Idaho’s, Akron’s and Kent State’s.

His team is 2-6 and 0-5 in Big Ten play.

You knew the question was coming. We live in tabloid times, where the body of a man’s work is measured by what he did yesterday and what he’d better do tomorrow.

So, a reporter patched in via phone call to Paterno’s Tuesday news conference asked the coach whether he deserved to be back in 2005.

“I don’t really appreciate that question, to be honest with you,” Paterno answered. “After 55 years, to have somebody tell me that, I don’t appreciate that.”

And so the long, possibly torturous, goodbye begins.

The question, “How do you fire Joe Paterno?” comes with a simple answer:

You don’t.

The rules of 2004 engagement do not apply to an icon who has poured heart, soul and millions of dollars into Penn State since joining the staff in 1950.

John Cappelletti, who won the 1973 Heisman Trophy as a Penn State running back, considered the audacity of Tuesday’s inquiry.

“Do you deserve to be back after 55 years of building a program?” Cappelletti said. “It deserves a little bit more time and respect than that.”

How much time, though, and how much respect?

The stubbornness that made Paterno a great coach might not serve him as well in dealing with his coaching mortality.

Yet, ultimately, the only man who can fire Paterno is Paterno.

Will he eventually make the call on himself?

“I think he has to come to that conclusion,” Cappelletti said. “How do you even categorize this gets to be the question. You don’t have any other reference point with Penn State because in modern times, there hasn’t been a situation like this.”

Cappelletti says this is one coaching job that should not be evaluated in the first week of November.

“At the end of this season, then you take a look at this, then at least people sit down and discuss it,” Cappelletti said. “And if Joe decides he wants to do it for another year, that’s probably the way it’s going to be. If he decides it’s in the best interest of the program to start looking and start maybe transitioning out, he will probably determine that too.

“You’re looking at a tough deal, no matter what.”

Paterno gives no indication that he’s ready to walk away.

He recently signed a contract extension through 2008 and still says he’s one solid recruiting haul from halcyon days.

“We’re only a couple of players away from being a pretty good football team,” he insisted this week.

The Nittany Lions’ offense is anemic, but the defense is stout and young.

Paterno desperately wants to leave Penn State on the uptick, and might be looking to next year for his getaway plan.

The 2005 schedule is front-loaded with three home games Penn State should win: South Florida, Cincinnati and Central Michigan. The team then goes to Northwestern (winnable) and then returns home to face Minnesota (winnable).

A 5-0 start is not out of the question, and there is reason to believe Penn State could cobble together enough wins for a bowl berth.

“I know what has to be done, and I don’t feel like we’re out of it,” Paterno said.

Anyone who thinks Paterno will go gently into the Nittany night is mistaken.

Network Talks

Bowl championship series commissioners met with television networks this week in Chicago to continue negotiations on a new contract (the current one expires after the 2005 season).

Unable to reach a deal during ABC’s 45-day exclusivity period, the commissioners are now inviting other networks to bid on the future, amid speculation the “double hosting” plan may be in trouble.

Instead of a playoff, the BCS and school presidents agreed last spring to a proposal in which each of the four major bowls -- Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta -- would have two games every four years: the regular bowl game and a “national title” contest to be played about a week later.

This plan opened up two additional at-large positions each year, which satisfied the inclusion concerns of the five conferences that are not members of the BCS.

That plan, however, was contingent on its being financially viable.

The question now: Is “double hosting” viable?

“It’s very much premature to say it’s in jeopardy,” Pacific 10 Conference Commissioner Tom Hansen said this week.

The BCS hopes bringing in other networks will spur competition and produce a financial package that can make the double-host plan work.

“It’s pretty clear that the networks have communicated with each other through the news media and have said, ‘I’m not going to pay premium price for sports, how about you?’ ” Hansen said.

Is there a Plan B should “double hosting” fall through?

The BCS could try to sell the package in its present format or reconsider the “plus-one” model proposal favored by the networks.

“Plus-one” calls for the top two teams to play a title game after the four BCS games have been staged.

That proposal has been rejected by school presidents who consider the “plus one” model the forerunner to an NFL-style playoff, which they adamantly oppose.

Hurry-Up Offense

Scott Paterno, Joe’s son, failed Tuesday in his bid to win Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District.

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Gilbertson never had a snowball’s chance at Washington, last year taking over a program paralyzed by Rick Neuheisel’s dismissal and pending NCAA probation.

Washington was 6-6 under Gilbertson last year, and this year is 1-7.

Gilbertson thought he could overcome the obstacles.

“Coaches are kind of like pioneers and astronauts anyway,” he said at his news conference this week. “There isn’t a thing we don’t think we can do, there isn’t anything we can’t handle, there’s no problem we can’t overcome. We’re idiots like that.”

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Fall-back position: And you thought Washington State’s 42-12 loss to USC last weekend couldn’t get worse for Bill Doba? The morning after, the Cougars’ coach had a 7:30 a.m. meeting scheduled with recruits at a local hotel. When Doba arrived to find no players present, he might have assumed they had all committed to USC. Actually, Doba forgot to set his clock back and arrived an hour early.

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Next Washington coach, the early line: Expect the Huskies to make a run at Dan Hawkins of Boise State, Utah’s Meyer and California’s Jeff Tedford. Washington President Mark Emmert, who held a similar post at Louisiana State last year, hired Nick Saban, but don’t put too much stock in that. We can’t imagine Saban leaving Baton Rouge.

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After watching Dana College quarterback Tom Lensch throw an NCAA-record 101 passes against Hastings College last weekend, Bill Danenhauer, his coach, told Associated Press: “I guess I’m going to have to put him on a pitch count from now on.”

Lensch completed 56 passes for 507 yards.

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Rise and fall: Three weeks ago, Purdue was 5-0 and senior quarterback Kyle Orton was the prohibitive Heisman Trophy favorite. Last Saturday, Orton watched from the sidelines as Purdue fell to 5-3 after a 10-7 loss to Northwestern.

Coach Joe Tiller pulled Orton in the third quarter and replaced him with Brandon Kirsch, but Tiller said it wasn’t what you thought.

“It wasn’t a benching as we typically think,” Tiller explained of his decision. Tiller said Orton had been bothered by a nagging hip injury and that his position was not in jeopardy.

“He’s the starting quarterback at Purdue and will continue to be. We just need to get this rascal healthy.”

Orton is listed as questionable for Saturday’s game at Iowa.

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One school brings coffee, the other brings doughnuts? Start time for Boise State’s Nov. 13 game at San Jose State has been moved to 9:07 a.m. so it can be televised on ESPN2.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Winners

All-time NCAA Division I-A coaching victories:

*--* No. Coach Wins 1. Bobby Bowden* 348 2. Joe Paterno* 341 3. Bear Bryant 323 4. Glenn “Pop” Warner 319 5. Amos Alonzo Stagg 314 6. LaVell Edwards 257 7. Tom Osborne 255 8. Lou Holtz* 248 9. Woody Hayes 238 10. Bo Schembechler 234

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* -- active