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Dispatch
COMMENTARY
Paterno?s visit a moment to cherish for OSU fans
Saturday, September 23, 2006
BOB HUNTER
If you can get close enough to make Joe Paterno appear larger than a bespectacled grain of sand in your viewfinder today, snap a few pictures.
It might seem silly to you now, but you?ll want them later. Twenty or 30 years from now, when you want to show them off, no one will turn down your offer. Fifty or 75 years from now, your grandchildren will either treasure them or offer them for sale on their generation?s eBay.
Or maybe you have a child who?s old enough to remember something more than the cotton candy some drunken reveler gave them from a neighboring tailgate. Make a point of showing them the old guy on the Penn State sideline. Don?t bore them with Paterno?s life story or statistics from his career. (You might be fascinated by the Paterno-Bobby Bowden race to finish as college football?s winningest coach, but your kid?s eyes will glaze over as if you were talking about Chester Arthur?s presidency). Simply saying that old "dude" on the Penn State side is "sweet" might be enough, or you could just say he?s a legend and someday you?ll want to remember seeing him.
They probably won?t care now, but someday they probably will want to remember.
But why the big deal now? Paterno is 79. He might still be coaching in two years when the Nittany Lions next return to Ohio Stadium; he may be back three or four times. But one of these mornings he may climb out of bed and simply declare that shuffleboard and bingo beckons, that he?s tired of being skewered by people who have never seen the inside of football meeting room and that he has had enough.
Paterno became head coach at Penn State in 1966. If you take a minute to think about just what that means, the $62 you paid for your ticket might start to seem like a bargain.
"Joe Paterno is a guy that in my football lifetime he?s always been there," OSU coach Jim Tressel said this week. "To me, there?s no age to that, he?s just there."
Most fans around here can?t think in terms of Penn State history. But if you think of Paterno in terms of Ohio State history, his 40 years as head coach of the Nittany Lions start to come into focus:
When Paterno took over as head coach in State College, Jim Stillwagon, Rex Kern, Jack Tatum and the incredible sophomore class that helped give Ohio State its 1968 national championship were still in high school. The annual season-ending wars between Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler still seemed like an impossibility; Schembechler, a former Hayes assistant, was in his fourth year as coach at Miami.
Lombardi Award and Outland Trophy winner John Hicks was a sophomore in high school. Two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin was in the seventh grade. Tressel was still in grade school. He wouldn?t even get his first head coaching job for another 20 years.
It was a different era of college football, a time when most of the games weren?t on television, when only one Big Ten team was permitted to play in a bowl game and the idea of Penn State joining the Big Ten seemed like a silly pipedream.
Yet Paterno was on the Penn State sideline, building a program that would make three games with Ohio State counterpart Woody Hayes in the 1970s seem like instant classics. Today?s matchup with Tressel finds Paterno on the Ohio Stadium sideline again almost 28 years after Hayes was fired and almost 20 years after his death.
In an age when every game is the "biggest" and every player the "greatest," an age when superlatives and world records seem like they may have tumbled from an open box of Cracker Jack, Paterno is one of the few athletic figures who can justifiably be called "living history," a walking, talking, coaching museum piece.
So pack those binoculars. Take some photos. Soak it all in.
If you had one more chance to watch Woody coach, wouldn?t you want to remember that day?
Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.
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Dispatch
Buckeyes bounce back from ‘Whiteout’
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Ken Gordon
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ever since the "Whiteout," Ohio State has been red hot.
With Penn State (2-1) in town today, it seems fitting to look back on how much has changed for top-ranked OSU (3-0) since the teams last met.
On Oct. 8, 2005, the Nittany Lions handed the Buckeyes a 17-10 loss in Happy Valley in a nationally televised night game that featured a frenzied crowd dressed almost entirely in white.
That night, a veteran defense throttled the Buckeyes, who gained just 230 total yards. Running back Antonio Pittman was stuffed, and quarterback Troy Smith was sacked five times and passed for just 139 yards.
That was the low-water mark for the Buckeyes, who haven’t lost since, having defeated Michigan, Notre Dame and Texas. Their 10-game win streak is tied with West Virginia for second longest in the country, behind Texas Christian at 13.
And they haven’t been stopped offensively since, either. Pittman is on track for a second-straight 1,000-yard season, Smith is a Heisman Trophy hopeful, and the offense has averaged 36 points and 458 yards.
It has been a remarkable transformation.
"I think any time you play tough games and tough teams, you learn lessons," coach Jim Tressel said. "So I just think it was a gradual learning of ‘Hey, here’s what it takes to play against the top end, and here’s what we’re going to have to do to (get to) that level.’ I don’t think it was any light bulb that went on. I think it was just a gradual learning."
Smith has made the most obvious improvement. At Penn State, he was under heavy pressure and usually ended up running. He had 19 rushes.
He has averaged only six attempts per game since. The consensus is his knowledge of defenses has grown to the point that he stays in the pocket longer and goes through his progressions rather than escaping at the first opportunity.
Maybe more impressive is the fact that after throwing an interception at Penn State, he has thrown only two since.
"He’s obviously a much, much better passer, polished, makes better decisions," Penn State coach Joe Paterno said. "He’s always had a strong arm; no one ever questioned his being able to throw the ball. It was a question of whether he could do the things a big-time college quarterback has to do in the passing game and not just take off and run. He’s not running around as much probably, because he doesn’t have to."
This season, Smith has 12 rush attempts for minus-14 yards. It’s to the point that some are asking why he doesn’t try to run more. After all, he gained 611 yards on the ground last season, and a mobile quarterback scares the daylights out of opposing defenses.
But Ohio State coaches and players look at it this way: They’re 3-0 without having to use Smith’s legs. That option is still in the playbook; they just haven’t had to turn to it.
"I think runs will come," Smith said. "I’m sure all the wrinkles in the game plan have not been let out yet."
Center Doug Datish said, "No sense beating him up if we can throw the ball pretty good, that’s my opinion."
Part of the struggle last year at Penn State had to do with the ferocious Nittany Lions defense, of course. Part of it was the noise and environment.
But the Buckeyes have looked like a completely different offense since. And maybe just as important, they feel different.
"I think we’ve come to an agreement and an understanding that only we can stop us," Smith said. "I’m kind of cocky in saying this, and hopefully it doesn’t shoot me in the foot, but I truly, honestly believe that only we can stop us. This team is going to go as far as we want it to go."
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Saturday, September 23, 2006
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