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Oct. 9, 2005 The question asked Saturday morning by sports gurus was, is Penn State a pretender or a contender? Joe Paterno’s boys showed Saturday night they are contenders by staving off one helluva good Ohio State football team, holding them to ten points. They are now sitting on top of the Big Ten Conference with a 6 – 0 record. Should they hang onto the Big Ten Conference, they are assured a Rose Bowl bid and, who knows, maybe a national title. Paterno, seventy-nine years old, has proved once again he can still coach. He is a winner and will retire a winner, and will die a winner. Winning is something he expects from every team he has coached. This year is no different. Penn State faces a tough Michigan team next week and has a rough road ahead of them, but every team in the Big Ten faces a rough road, one of the greatest conferences in NCAA sports. Whether it be basketball or football, the Big Ten is always in the thick of things in spite of our great media sports announcers, who seem to have a love affair with the Southeast Conferences and the Western Conferences. Almost every year the Big Ten disappoints them. If you have ever lived in Pennsylvania (I did for ten years), you would realize the importance of football. Fourth-graders learn the Paterno game and by the time they are in the sixth grade they want to play for him, but being from Pennsylvania does not give you jersey for Penn State, being good does. In Pennsylvania you either play for Penn State or you play for “one of those other teams.”
I say to all of you skeptics out there, “Penn State is back.” Ah, the smell of fall and the banging of helmets. You just can’t beat it.
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