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For over 50 years, Joe Paterno has led the Penn State Nittany Lions to conquer insurmountable goals. Discover more about this incredible individual, and what continues to drive him to success.

A career marked with distinction, glorious accomplishments and immeasurable contributions to The Pennsylvania State University will reach another milestone as the 2006 campaign unfolds.

This fall will mark Joe Paterno’s 41st season pacing the sidelines as head coach of the Nittany Lions. Last year, he joined another college football legend, Amos Alonzo Stagg, as the only major college coaches to have served 40 years as head coach at a single institution. Stagg was a head coach for 57 years, including 41 at the University of Chicago (1892-1932), a mark Paterno will match in 2006.

For 56 years and 630 games, Paterno has passionately served the Penn State football program and the university with principle and success with honor. After 16 years as an assistant coach, he was rewarded in 1966 with the head coaching responsibilities surrendered by the retiring Rip Engle, his college coach at Brown who appointed him to the Penn State staff in 1950 as a brash 23-year-old.

He is older now, and wiser, but no less enthusiastic and no less dynamic. He is, simply put, the most successful coach in the history of college football — a fact that was validated during the 2001 season when he moved past Paul “Bear” Bryant to become the leader in career wins by a major college coach. He also is one of the most admired figures in college athletics, an acknowledged icon whose influence extends well beyond the white chalk lines of the football field.

“Even though he is enormously successful at it, from the perspective of meaningful contributions to society, the least important thing Joe Paterno does is coach football,” sports columnist Bill Lyon told his readers in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Paterno has faced every situation imaginable on the gridiron and has used his preparation, experience and understanding of the game he loves to respond and keep the Penn State program among the nation’s elite for 40 years.

The 2005 Nittany Lions are a squad the legendary coach will remember fondly. Building on the momentum of victories in the final two games of the 2004 season, the leadership for last year’s squad quickly became apparent and a group of players and coaches passionately toiled every day to return Penn State to the national championship picture. The Nittany Lions earned an 11-1 record, captured the Big Ten Championship and a thrilling triple overtime decision over Florida State in the FedEx Orange Bowl.

The 11-win season represented another milestone, as Penn State earned at least 10 victories under Paterno in a fifth different decade and for the 19th time overall. The Nittany Lions were No. 3 in the polls, earning their 13th Top 5 finish under the legendary coach, and 21st finish in the Top 10.

For his leadership in restoring the Nittany Lions to the nation’s elite, Paterno was recognized with numerous National Coach of the Year honors, capped by an unprecedented fifth selection by the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA). He also earned national honors from the Associated Press, Bobby Dodd, Home Depot/ESPN, Maxwell Football Club (George Munger), Pigskin Club of Washington, D.C., The Sporting News and the Walter Camp Football Foundation.

A member of the Nittany Lions’ coaching staff spanning the administrations of 11 U.S. presidents (starting with Harry Truman), Paterno passed Bryant on October 27, 2001 when the Lions secured his 324th victory by rallying from a 27-9 deficit to defeat Ohio State, 29-27, in the greatest Beaver Stadium comeback under the legendary coach.

Paterno has posted a 354-117-3 mark in 40 seasons as head coach and ranks second in career wins among major college coaches and fourth all-time. His winning percentage of 75.0 is sixth-best among active Division I-A coaches (10 or more years) and he is second all-time in games coached (474) among major college coaches.

Paterno is the all-time leader among coaches in bowl appearances (32) and post-season triumphs (21). His overall postseason record of 21-10-1 gives him a winning percentage of 67.2, tying him for No. 3 among the bowl season’s best of all-time. The Nittany Lions are 15-6 in New Year’s games under Paterno and 12-4 in the bowl games that comprise the Bowl Championship Series.

Since Paterno took over in 1966, Penn State has had 71 first-team All-Americans, claiming two during the 2005 season in Tamba Hali and Paul Posluszny. Over the same span, the Lions have counted 14 Hall of Fame Scholar-Athletes, 24 first-team Academic All-Americans (32 overall) and 18 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship winners. Posluszny earned first team Academic All-America honors in 2005 in addition to winning the Butkus and Bednarik Awards for his on the field performance.

Paterno’s coaching portfolio includes two National Championships (1982, 1986); five undefeated, untied teams; 20 finishes in the Top Ten of the national rankings; five AFCA Coach-of-the-Year plaques, and more than 300 former players who have signed National Football League contracts, 29 of them first-round draft choices. A school record four Nittany Lions were selected in the first round of the 2003 NFL Draft.

His teams have registered seven undefeated regular-seasons and he has had 30 teams finish in the Top 20. Penn State has won the Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy, emblematic of Eastern football supremacy, 22 times in Paterno’s coaching run, including in 2005.

Since 1966, there have been 775 head coaching changes among Division I-A programs, an average of more than six changes per I-A institution!

Paterno is the only coach to win the four traditional New Year’s Day bowl games — the Rose, Sugar, Cotton and Orange bowls — and he owns a 6-0 record in the Fiesta Bowl. He was selected by the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame as the first active coach to receive its Distinguished American Award. Paterno also was the 1986 Sports Illustrated “Sportsman-of-the-Year.”

Paterno has been selected for a pair of honors that will be bestowed this spring. He was named a Free Spirit honoree and recognized by The Freedom Forum in March at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. In April, Paterno will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dapper Dan Charities in Pittsburgh.

In 2004, Paterno was recognized twice for his illustrious career. He was selected the second-best college football coach of all-time by a panel of more than 300 media, current and former football coaches, Heisman Trophy winners and members of the College Football Hall of Fame. Paterno also was chosen the nation’s best college football coach of the past 25 years by an ESPN25 expert panel. He finished No. 8 overall in the listing of college and professional coaches from all sports over the past 25 years.

The American Football Coaches Association presented Paterno with its highest honor in 2002, the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award. The award honors those “whose services have been outstanding in the advancement of the best interests of football.”

In 1998, he was the initial winner of the Eddie Robinson Coach-of-the-Year Award, which recognizes an active college coach who is a role model to students and players, an active member of the community and an accomplished coach.

Joe Paterno simply is an unusual football coach...and, an unusual person.

In an exceptional display of generosity and affection for Penn State, Paterno; his wife, Sue, and their five children announced a contribution of $3.5 million to the University in 1998, bringing Paterno’s lifetime giving total to more than $4 million. The gift appears to be, Penn State Vice President for Development Rod Kirsch said, “the most generous ever made by a collegiate coach and his family to a university.”

The Paterno gift endows faculty positions and scholarships in the College of the Liberal Arts; the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture; the University Libraries and supports two building projects — a new interfaith spiritual center and the Penn State All-Sports Museum, both on the University Park campus. The museum opened in 2002 and the spiritual center was dedicated in 2003.

“Penn State has been very good to both Sue and me,” Paterno said. “We have met some wonderful people here, we’ve known many students who have gone on to become outstanding leaders in their professions and in society, and all of our children have received a first-class education here. I’ve never felt better about Penn State and its future potential than I do right now. Sue and I want to do all we can to help the University reach that potential.”

Obviously not a person of misplaced priorities, Paterno always has concentrated on seeing that his student-athletes attend class, devote the proper time to studies and graduate with a meaningful degree. He often has said he measures team success not by athletic prowess but by the number of productive citizens who make a contribution to society.

The 2005 NCAA Graduation Success Rate Report for Division I institutions revealed that the Penn State football program had a four-year graduation success rate (GSR) of 84 percent, substantially above the national average of 65 percent. The Nittany Lions posted the fifth-highest GSR among schools ranked in the last 2005 regular season Top 25 polls. The four-year graduation rate for Penn State African-American players entering in 1997-98 was 72 percent to easily exceed the 47 percent national average.

The wisdom of Paterno’s “total person” approach to football — which addresses academic and lifestyle matters in addition to athletic prowess — has won almost universal endorsement from the “products of the system.”

“I can tell you that virtually all of the players he’s touched in fifty years as an assistant and head coach have been enriched by the experience,” former quarterback Todd Blackledge said in the forward to Quotable Joe, a book of quotations by and about Paterno. “I consider myself, and I know my teammates and Penn State players past and present feel likewise, a better person for having played for Joe Paterno.”

LaVar Arrington, one of the 29 NFL first-round draft choices to come through Paterno’s Penn State program, was a two-time All-America selection and won the 1999 Butkus Award as the nation’s top linebacker as well as the Maxwell Club’s Chuck Bednarik Award, presented to the top collegiate defensive player.

“If you’re not a man when you get there, you’ll be a man before you leave,” Arrington said of his Penn State experience. “Joe has his system so that you’re prepared for life. Joe trains you more mentally than physically so that nothing will rattle you.”

Ex-All-America linebacker Matt Millen, the president and CEO of the Detroit Lions and a former television analyst on Fox Network telecasts of NFL games, is of the opinion “the main thing Joe gives you is perspective. He’s a teacher. He does more than football stuff. He’s always giving you these little speeches, and after a while you hear them so often and understand them and they’re pretty true.”

Joe and Sue Paterno have five children, all of whom are Penn State graduates, and 15 grandchildren.

Information and text courtesy of Penn State Athletics
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