Desire still drives Paterno

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- There is the eight-year-old Paterno Library, which will serve students at Penn State University for decades to come.

There is the interfaith spiritual center on campus, and the scholarships and faculty chairs, all endowed, financially and emotionally, by Joe and Sue Paterno.

All serve as testament to the impact the football coach has had on Penn State, and all are redundant. Penn State already had a building that captured what Paterno has meant to this university in his 58 years here.

It is at the center of campus, looming over the green that extends nearly to Harrisburg. It is the heart and soul of the Penn State.

It is called Old Main, and if the nickname Old Main doesn't fit Paterno like a pair of rolled-up pants and white socks, nothing does. Like Old Main, Paterno is a university icon, a symbol that represents Penn State to its alumni around the world. Old Main and Paterno are repositories of political power at Penn State.

Old Main holds the offices of president Graham Spanier and his administration.

Paterno holds, well, Paterno, a two-time national championship coach and the conscience of college football for decades.

All of which is only half the definition of Old Main -- the latter half. Like Old Main, built in 1863 and rebuilt in 1930, Paterno is old.

In the end, that's what the current debate over the future of Penn State football is all about, isn't it? The Nittany Lions are only three seasons removed from going 11-1 and finishing third in the nation. They went 9-4 in each of the two seasons since. Those three seasons followed a five-year spell of mediocrity at best -- the Nittany Lions had losing records in four of those seasons (2000-04).

So, yes, let's get it out in the open. Joe Paterno is old. By measures demographic and historic, Paterno is old.

He is 81, born in Brooklyn on Dec. 21, 1926. On the night of his birth, the U.S. attorney in New York City launched a raid of 58 night clubs and restaurants to stanch the flow of holiday liquor. That's right -- Paterno came into this world during Prohibition.

Paterno arrived several months before 13-year-old Paul Bryant wrestled a bear in the Fordyce Theater.

Paterno is three and a half years younger than Yankee Stadium, which will be euthanized next year because of old age. He played at Brown in the same era as Darrell Royal played at Oklahoma. Royal retired from coaching after the 1976 season.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the people who provide employment statistics on the first Friday of every month, doesn't even bother to measure 80-year-old workers. They lump them in the catch-all category of "75-and-over." In March, the Labor Department estimated the workforce included 679,000 male employees at least 75 years old, or about 10 percent of that age group.

Washington is one of the few cities outside of University Park, Pa., where an 80-year-old man yearns to work long hours in the public eye. Six members of the U. S. Senate are over the age of 80. Two of them, Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), both 84, are running for re-election this year.

"I'm told that 90 is the new 80," Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who turns 91 in November, told The New York Times last week.

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