Columnist Dean Juipe: Be leery of wounded Lion Joe Pa

Dean Juipe

Friday, Sept. 8, 2000 | 11:43 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

It's a common complaint directed toward the nation's sports media, and it's frequently a valid one.

All too often, here's how the cycle goes: Find and promote a rising star; discover his foibles; tear him down.

But this is not what's happening with Joe Paterno. At 73 years old and after 35 years as the head coach at Penn State, the criticism he's receiving these days has nothing to do with media looking to burst his balloon.

It's more a case of believing, as, apparently, some of his own players do, that the game of football is passing him by.

The Nittany Lions are not only 0-2, they're averaging less than one yard per carry and have only 36 rushing yards for the season.

They have lost 29-5 to Southern California, which is no disgrace, and 24-6 to Toledo, which is.

When they take the field Saturday to face Louisiana Tech, it'll be with a five-game losing streak in regular-season games.

For a team that entered the season ranked No. 13 by ESPN The Magazine, No. 17 in the coaches' poll and No. 22 by the Associated Press, Penn State's early season performance stands as the most disappointing in football. Tack on Paterno's lenient handling of a star quarterback who is facing assault charges on an off-duty police officer, as well as Paterno's heartless handling and year-long suspension of a lesser player for using a phony I.D., and life in Happy Valley is anything but.

Given these less than honorable factors, it's no surprise the fans were booing the Lions last week and that there's a growing sentiment that Paterno has hung around this long merely to satisfy his own ego and eclipse the all-time victory record for coaches. He's at 317 and needs seven to pass Bear Bryant.

While it once seemed a foregone conclusion that he would set the record this year, there's some doubt now. Penn State will win Saturday -- it is favored by 15 -- and gets Pittsburgh next week before settling into a grueling Big Ten schedule in which nothing is assured.

If the Lions are actually down, Paterno won't make it to 324 and he'll all but have to step aside and let a younger man coach the team.

But Paterno has had only one losing season (5-6 in 1988) in 35 and his teams routinely qualify for bowl games. He also had his 1990 team start 0-2 and saw it go on to win its next nine games.

So you can't write him off too soon.

What has to be the most damning indictment he's facing, however, comes from the mouths of his own players. A handful of them spoke up this week and were extremely critical of Paterno's "predictable" play calling, adding that Toledo players were laughing at how easy it was to decipher the Lions' game plan.

While most football players complain about the complexity of their team's play book, one Penn State player came out and said he can get by on memorizing "six or eight" basic formations.

None of this is tragic and most of it is amusing in a perverse sort of way, as if seeing the personality-challenged Joe Pa on the hot seat is good for a chuckle.

So, yes, this is a "how the mighty have fallen" story after all, except there's a wariness that the old man might still have something up his sleeve.