they'll do the same things they do now... being that he does . . . NOTHING. He sits in the press box and watches the game and then occasionally gives a phone call or two to the guys running the ship on the field. Granted, he's earned the right to do that, but he has minimal control over the team.
Joe Pa to college football is Pope John Paul II to the Catholic Church -- John Paul II died at 84 (two years older than Paterno is now). I can't think of too many people in my family that lived past 82. The average life expectancy for a male in the US is 75.
JoePa is and will always be one of the greats of college football. He's one of the few remaining of that special breed of coaches. Because my dad was a coach, I always look affectionately at these guys who give their lives over to the game. One could argue that sort of dedication could kill family life, but in the case of a family that actually embraces the sport with the coach, it's a one-of-a-kind sort of experience. As my mom used to say, "Sure, he's gone all the time during football season, but what other job allows me to go out on Friday nights and witness what my husband's been working on all week?" For me, I'm so happy that my dad was a coach; I wouldn't have traded it for anything, and I'm sure Paterno's family feels the same way. One anecdote on a personal note about JoePa: Back in the late 70's, my dad heard Paterno speak at a coaches' clinic. He wanted more information about some sort of defensive set that Paterno discussed, so he thought, "What the heck? I'll send him a letter asking about it." A week later, a huge packet arrived in the mail that contained Paterno's defensive playbook, complete with handwritten notes describing every possible contingency on each play from Sandusky, JoePa's long-time DC. My dad was blown away because Paterno never recruited south Louisiana, so he didn't expect a college coach to go out of his way to answer his questions. Sure, a coach that recruited this area might bend over backwards to help a local coach, but what Paterno did was extraordinary.
