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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 10, 2010

Joe Paterno

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to Penn State Bowl Media Day, Outback Bowl Media Day. We'll start with questions.

Q. What were your thoughts when you heard that Urban Meyer was going to resign after the Outback Bowl?
COACH PATERNO: You know, I hate to get into the Urban Meyer thing, to be frank with you. I have tremendous respect for him. If he wants to do what he's doing, then I think he's entitled to do it.
I got asked that question a hundred times yesterday down in Tampa. What I told them was, when I was Urban's age, I had a couple opportunities to leave, do some other things. But when I was his age, I was just a short little Italian with a long nose. I didn't have a lot of opportunities.
He's a big, good-looking guy. He's a really good family man. He's got a lot of things he can do. He's making some decisions which I'm sure are not easy for him, but he's making them. I admire him and respect him for what he's doing.
I think that will about cover it all. I know that doesn't answer your question completely, but...

Q. Do you think Anthony Fera will be back for the Bowl game?
COACH PATERNO: I think Anthony will. We went down to Tampa yesterday. They have a press day, a promotion day. (Indiscernible) went with us. There's a lot of people we take with us. We wanted to make sure that he did not step on anybody's toes, if he takes care of some people. At that time he indicated that Fera would be okay. He said it's not a certainty, but he hopes that he will be okay.

Q. Coach, a couple of your assistants' names have come up with other possibilities. Is there an update if will you be able to keep your staff reasonably together going forward?
COACH PATERNO: I don't know what's going to happen with the staff. I think some opportunities have come about. Some of them will look into them, into the opportunities. Whether there's anything good enough for them or not, they'll have to make that decision.
I hate to lose any of them. I think we have a good staff. I think they proved that this year when we had to go through a lot of adversity. They hung in there tough. I think we did get better. I would hope we can keep them all.
But, you know, people have to make decisions and do what's best for them and their families. We may find ourselves in a position where some of the guys may have opportunities to go other places. Hopefully I wouldn't lose anybody as an assistant coach. But I guess getting a chance to be an assistant coach at someplace, I would hope the situation here was good enough that he wouldn't leave.
People have to live their lives. I just don't know, to be frank with you. I think some of them probably will get contacted. Whether they're be invited to take another job or not I have no way of knowing. I would hope that if it's another assistant's job, that the job they have is good enough to stay here.
You don't know. It's a pretty nice place to work. It's a good place to live. I would hope that we would be able to keep all our people. But I can't guarantee that. Whatever's best for them is best for all of us.

Q. You've been very successful against the Southeast Conference. What do you think has allowed you to enjoy that success, especially in Bowl games?
COACH PATERNO: Well, you know, we've played well. No question, we have played some of our better football games against Southeast Conference teams. A lot of it's the way we've played. We've also had good luck with the weather. Regardless of weather, what we think, if you take last year, the thing I was scared to death of with LSU was their speed. Yet when we went down there, we had one of the wettest fields that we've ever played on, and it was more of a handicap to them than it was to us. That's the second time we played down there that we had that kind of weather. Played Auburn a couple years ago when we had the same kind of weather when young Bowden was coaching down there.
I think the challenge of playing a Southeast Conference team, it's tough. It's tough. Our kids have looked forward to playing against clubs of that caliber. On the other hand, we've had some good luck as far as the weather. We've been in a situation where the weather has been more on our side than it's been on their side.

Q. Has Kevin Newsome met with you since the end of the regular season and has he said anything about possibly transferring?
COACH PATERNO: Kevin and I talked on Friday. I told Kevin that he ought to just work at it Friday and Saturday of this week and see what's going to happen.
He's very anxious to play. Nobody can guarantee anything, particularly in that position. And I'm planning to make sure he gets it, an honest shot at being the quarterback.
I think Jay that works with the quarterbacks likes the kid. We think he's a fine prospect. But having said, at this stage he's not quite as far along as the other two kids. So that's a tough call for us. Obviously it's a tough call for him because he does want to play. He doesn't particularly want to wait forever to play.
My advice to him was suck it up for now and for the spring, see what happens then, and at the end of spring practice let's sit down and decide what kind of future you may have at Penn State as a football player. Right now don't worry about the playing, just worry about getting as good as you can get, work hard at the little things that you've got to do better in order to be a little bit more competitive. I said we'll talk this week, meaning this upcoming week. That's what we're going to do. After his final exams, we're going to meet again.
I don't know what he's going to do.

Q. Do you feel like your quarterback situation, that with all the depth you have, is it a good problem to have, that somebody may feel like he can't jump over someone else?
COACH PATERNO: Who else we going to gamble with? You can't get them all ready. You can't go out there and practice for seven hours a day. You can't. You got to get a couple guys ready. We're trying to do that.
I really think that we've done a really good job with the young kids we've had. I think the young kids, the coaching they've gotten, we've gotten as much as we can out of them. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to get three kids ready.
Now, we have another kid, Paul Jones, who is also a kid with a lot of ability. It's not an easy decision, to be very frank with you. The thing about Newsome is, Newsome can play a lot of positions, but he wants to be a quarterback.

Q. Tampa Bay, they've been having trouble with the fields down there. When you were down there yesterday, did the field look okay?
COACH PATERNO: I know what you said, but I don't know what the point is.

Q. If the field is bad down there that you're going to be playing on.
COACH PATERNO: The field is a good field. I wasn't sure where you were coming from.
They do a good job with their fields. We would have preferred to do what we've done what we did in other years. I would have preferred to take the team to a place like Clearwater or St. Petersburg because it's a change of pace. They're on the beach. You're not in one place for 10 days. I would have preferred that went to Clearwater or went to St. Pete, then maybe the day before Christmas went up into Tampa, start there.
Here we are another different place. You know, just try to break it up a little bit. To be in a place as long as we're going to be, Tampa Bay facility, I'm not so sure I want to be there that long. But we can't get into St. Petersburg. There's a game going to be played there on the 21st. They've got a game on the 21st at 8:00 at night, so we don't want to go up there on the 20th. We've gone to St. Pete previously where we had the whole week to ourselves. Then we went up to Tampa. We can't do that with the way things are now.
And we tried Clearwater. We went down there, Tommy went over to Clearwater to take a look at the Phillies setup. They have a great setup. But the Phillies, they're a little bit reluctant to guarantee that they would not be there.
So we're going to go to Tampa Bay and stay at Tampa Bay.

Q. Before the last game you said you wanted to return 2011. Have you had a chance to talk that over with the administration at Penn State?
COACH PATERNO: Have I talked to the players, you say?

Q. The administration, the higher ups.
COACH PATERNO: I didn't say I was going to talk to the administration.

Q. I didn't say you did.
COACH PATERNO: You kind of threw me off there.
I haven't talked to anybody. I've talked to my football team, trying to talk about getting ready to play a good football game. But I haven't even thought about that. You guys are the guys talking about that, thinking about that. You're ready to bury me.
We got to play a tough football team. Florida reminds me so much of us this particular year in that they at times look as good as anybody you can find, and then other times they get a little bit inconsistent and they make some mistakes, as you guys have observed us do.
We've got a tough job on our hands. And I think with Urban leaving, I think that's going to lead to the whole business of those kids are going to want to win the football game not only for the reasons you would expect them to want to win it, but because I think the fact they want to send Urban off on the right foot. So to me right now our job is to get as ready as we can to play as well as we can, and realize we got a tough game ahead of us.

Q. What about this time of the year, with the extra practice time, almost like a second spring practice? You have to get excited for that type of thing.
COACH PATERNO: What I've tried to do in all the Bowl games we've played, and we've had decent success in the Bowl games, is I'd like the kids to work hard, and the Bowl game becomes a reward. I don't want that to be something we're going down there for any other reason except we're going to play a good team. You're a good football team, and it's fun to play against good teams, particular when they're intersectional games, people you ordinarily wouldn't play, and yet I want to make sure they have a good time.
So I don't make them come in to bed, I don't have a curfew. My only rules are, hey, let's behave, get ready to go home, we'll send you home. I haven't got time to be a monitor. But let's go have some fun. When we practice, let's practice hard, let's practice as well as we can. Let's go play as well as we can play. Let's see how good we are.
To play a team with the tradition and the background that Florida has should be fun for any kid. You only get to do some of those things once in your lifetime. I want them to enjoy it. I want them to have a lot of fun. But yet I want to play well.
I think the best way to do it is to do what I just said: give them some freedom, let them have a little fun, but when we practice, we practice, practice hard. We don't go out on the practice field, you know, with fans and make sure everybody's comfortable. The guys get a fan, I get one for me.
I think that's the attitude we've taken. In most cases it's worked out pretty well. We've gone to games and we've played hard. We've practiced hard. Hopefully we can do that for this one.

Q. Coach, is it just something that you have come to expect at this time of year that people are always going to be asking about your future?
COACH PATERNO: Get off that thing, will you, for God's sake?

Q. Does it bother you to be asked these questions?
COACH PATERNO: You bother me (laughter). I mean, how many times can I answer the same question? I must have answered that question 50 times down there.
I've told you I have not given it any thought. It doesn't bother me. It bothers you guys, all right? I want to go down there and have a good football team, period. Can't you get that through your head? Right now that's the only thing I'm thinking about. I'm looking at tapes.
I told you that one of the great coaches of the last 25 years has just resigned, and that when I've looked at tapes of Florida, he is so innovative that almost every football game I've seen them play, they have started the game in a way that they are going to try to control the tempo, the way the game's going to be played. We have no way of knowing what we're going to get, all right?
For me to go back home and say, Hey, I want to do this. I'm up in the middle of the night looking at tapes. I'm trying to put myself into his head, that this is what they're going to try to do to us. I mean, this is what I would do to us if I were playing us, that kind of thing.
I haven't got time for the other nonsense.

Q. Finals are next week. Any kids you're going to be watching, worried about academically, might have some trouble next week?
COACH PATERNO: Who might not make it academically? Right now we're going to finals. You know, it looks to me like they're all going to make it. Gbadyu is shaky. Did a good job in one course. Looks like he's going to be okay. So I don't think we're going to lose anybody academically.
Now, physically, there will be seven or eight kids that will not play because of injuries. As I said, we have finals coming up. We have a couple of kids that are a little shaky. Not all phi beta kappas. Some of them have to work at it. So right now I'm optimistic. I could get fooled.

Q. How far back will you look at film of Florida and Urban Meyer's team? Do you go back five, six, seven years?
COACH PATERNO: Well, you got to remember now, I've watched Florida for more than five seasons. I've watched them and I've watched a lot of the Southeast Conference teams they play. I couldn't tell you how many years. Whether it's five, six, eight, I don't know. But I've watched them play for a lot of years. Southeast Conference plays a very aggressive, fast game of football. So I've tried to learn from them. I've really watched a lot of them.
Now, how much would I look at Florida, look at a tape. I don't know. I don't know how much I could tell you because I may be looking at Florida, but they might be playing an LSU or an Alabama, and you can't help looking at the other guy. All of a sudden you say, That's a very good thing that Alabama is doing against Florida. It's something you're aware of the whole football game.
I've seen Florida. I've seen Urban's teams play. I've looked at tapes of them off and on a hundred games.

Q. Can you talk about injuries.
COACH PATERNO: You guys know as well as I do how many guys that are hurt. We got seven guys right now that aren't going to make it, we don't expect to make it. They're guys that are seriously injured. Gilliam, Beachum, kids of that kind. They're not going to play.

Q. What about Latimore?
COACH PATERNO: You know, we're going to lose some players, that's all I can tell you. Now, we're going to lose some more players probably. I mean, we have had injuries. You're asking me some things that I really don't know how to answer. I get a telephone call. They call me 6:30 in the morning, said Fera got appendicitis. I don't think I've ever lost a kid to appendicitis. Calls me the other day, we got a guy who had a knee operation that turned up with gout on his knee, all right? How many guys get gout at 20?
I don't even want to talk about the damn things. I really don't. Every time I open my mouth, somebody yells (indiscernible). People go down. That doesn't answer your question, I know that.
You guys have a little conference with the medical people, you really should, ask some questions because I can't answer half those questions. I just can't.

Q. If you were Urban Meyer, how would you attack? Could you offer up an assessment of Florida offensively?
COACH PATERNO: What Florida would do against us? I don't know. I think right now we have a little difficulty playing against, not because we're that good, but because we are so inconsistent. Well, you guys have seen us play. Some days we tear the devil out of the football, other days we can't hit the side of the barn.
So I don't know what his plans, what their plans would be. I don't think we can worry about that. I think we have to just make sure we line up properly, that when we get there we can tackle that speed. We just can't give up easy ones.
They've got some quarterback problems probably, too. I don't know. I have not studied their quarterback enough for me to tell you that they've got some problems with them. I don't know. I think I know that we're going to get something a little different. We're going to get a couple of things that are going to be tough for us to defense.
What they decide to do to us, you know, I really couldn't tell you.

Q. Coach, are you fighting a cold or do you have a case of the gout?
COACH PATERNO: Got gout of the throat (laughter). Got somewhat of a cold. I've had it for a while. Had it for about maybe six weeks. But, hey, man, it's nothing serious. It just sounds worse than it is.

Q. I know you want to win for the seniors, but do you see this as a springboard game into next year?
COACH PATERNO: I hope so. One of the things I'm hoping is the fact we're going to have 16 days of practice for this game, that we're going to have an opportunity to take some of the young kids. I always encourage them on a positive note, we've had two days of practice, and I told the staff, I said, I want you to spend more time with the young kids right now. Let's not worry too much about the older kids.
I was really pleased the way some of the younger kids reacted. There's more personnel, better personnel, with some of the younger kids than I thought. The skill people are still a little bit... The quarterback situation, we got to get a guy who gets in there and handles a tough ballgame, takes advantage of situations. But our offensive line people practiced better than I think they've practiced.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, coach.

End of FastScripts

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