10 College Football Figures Who Were Influenced by Joe Paterno

College football lost one of its legends on Sunday morning when former Penn State coach Joe Paterno lost his battle with lung cancer at the age of 85.

He coached 62 seasons in State College, the final 46 of those as head coach of the Nittany Lions. While his record of 409 wins will likely never come close to being matched, that is not his greatest contribution.

The millions of dollars he donated to Penn State helped make it one of the most prominent public universities in the country. His greatest accomplishment, however, is the impact he made on college football and the men who both played and coached for and against him.

Many of those men would go on to make their own impact on college football, some at Penn State, and some elsewhere. Here are ten of those men whose success in the sport can be traced to Paterno.

Frank Beamer

Like Paterno, Beamer took over an independent Eastern program without a history of success. When Beamer was named head coach of Virginia Tech, he was able to use Paterno's model from two decades earlier to turn the Hokies into a national power.

Beamer's success eventually allowed the Hokies to join the Big East and later the ACC, much as Paterno's quarter-century of dominance helped Penn State receive an invitation to the Big Ten in the early 1990's. Beamer assumed the role of winningest active FBS coach upon Paterno's firing last November.

Todd Blackledge

Blackledge won a national championship as a senior quarterback under Paterno at Penn State and was a part of the famous quarterback class of 1983. Unlike John Elway, Jim Kelly and Dan Marino, Blackledge's NFL career was short and relatively unproductive.

However, Blackledge has found success in another field: becoming one of the most prominent television game analysts, having called the lead SEC on CBS game for six seasons before taking over the role on ESPN primetime games. His education in State College helped him turn a disappointing professional career on the field into a major success off the field.

John Capelletti

One of the most memorable Heisman Trophy speeches came from Cappelletti in 1973, the only winner of sports' most famous individual award to play under Paterno, who called the halfback, "the greatest player I ever coached," at the time.

Cappelletti's tear-jerking speech where he dedicated his award to his brother, Joey, who was dying of cancer. A film, titled Something for Joey, was produced based on Cappelletti's speech that night in New York.

Al Golden

Paterno was one of the few coaches who always wore a shirt and tie on the sidelines, and that legacy will continue through one of his former players, Miami (FL) head coach Al Golden. Golden was a linebacker for the Nittany Lions in the early 1990's and was mentioned as a possible successor to Paterno.

Golden was a little known defensive coordinator at a mediocre Virginia program in the mid-2000's, but after being named the head coach at Temple he took the Owls from the laughing stock of college football to a MAC title contender. He just completed his first year with the Hurricanes.

Matt Millen

Before he won Super Bowls with three different teams, Millen was a star linebacker under Paterno at Penn State in the late 1970's. As a college football analyst for ESPN, Millen was frequently asked to discuss his former coach on air.

Although his tenure as general manager of the Detroit Lions was deemed a failure by most, he has become more famous since his retirement than he was a player. He has called NFL games for three different networks and now announces Saturday afternoon ABC college football games.

Don Nehlen

The football programs at Penn State and West Virginia will be forever linked—not only because of their annual series while both were independents, or because of their recruiting wars in Pittsburgh, but primarily due to their legendary figures, Nehlen and Paterno.

Nehlen took reigns of the Mountaineers program in 1980 and won 149 games in 21 years in Morgantown, playing for the national title in 1988. The annual meeting between the Mountaineers and Nittany Lions was one of the marquee games in Eastern football.

A 17-14 WVU win in 1984 snapped a 25-game losing streak in the series and helped spark a decade of great success for Nehlen and the Mountaineers.

Nick Saban

Growing up in West Virginia and spending the first 16 years of his coaching career in the Northeast and Midwest, Saban often crossed paths with Paterno in his early years. He coached against him seven times as a head coach, winning five of the seven meetings.

Saban was one of the first coaches to speak publicly after Paterno's passing. His Alabama teams faced Penn State in both 2010 and 2011. He frequently comments on the importance of the "process" in coaching, a mentality that the roots of which can be traced to Paterno and Penn State.

Greg Schiano

Paterno's coaching tree is very limited for someone who was a head coach for 46 years, thanks in large part to the loyalty of his assistant coaches. Schiano, who coached defensive backs at Penn State in the early 1990's, is one of the few to go from a Paterno assistant to a head coach of a major program.

He took over a downtrodden Rutgers program in 2001 and turned them into a national title contender late in the 2006 season. He was frequently mentioned as a possible successor to Paterno after his remarkable turnaround with the Scarlet Knights.

Howard Schnellenberger

Like Nehlen at West Virginia, Schnellenberger's rebuilding of Miami (FL) can be traced to some epic battles with Paterno and the Nittany Lions. He took over a poorly run program in Coral Gables with no fanbase and no history in 1979.

While the Hurricanes finished only 5-6 in 1979, they registered a signature win in State College, a 26-10 over No. 16 Penn State. The star of the game was redshirt freshman quarterback Jim Kelly, a Pennsylvania native who was recruited by Paterno as a linebacker. The next year, Miami (FL) was back in the postseason and would win the 1983 national championship in Schnellenberger's final season.

Adam Taliaferro

Taliaferro was the victim one of the most damaging injuries in recent college football history, suffering temporary paralysis in his freshman season during a 2000 game at Ohio State. Despite given only a small chance of walking again, he would lead the Nittany Lions out on the field less than a year later for a game against Miami (FL).

A book entitled Miracle in the Making was written about his recovery and Taliaferro has established a foundation to help with spinal cord injuries. He went on to graduate from Penn State and received a law degree from Rutgers in 2008.