Press Conference With Joe Paterno: State Of The Penn State Football Team

I had the opportunity today to sit in on a press conference with the man himself, Joe Paterno.

I was ready for an entertaining twenty minutes or so, as I have seen, and heard about the experiences people have had during a Joe Paterno press conference.

Paterno walked in at around 12 PM, and was immediately ready for the onslaught of questions that would follow his arrival.

The beginning series of questions involved what we would have expected, the injury problems on the Nittany Lion defense.

Paterno showed confidence in the fact that Gerald Hodges, Jack Crawford, and Bani Gbadyu would all be ready for the upcoming game this weekend against Minnesota.

One personnel change that we will see this weekend is that Chaz Powell will be playing corner.  Powell is normally an offensive player, but will play the other side of the ball due to lack of effective play offensively.

Paterno said, "Well he came to me and talked about it, and he wasn't playing as much offensively as he might be, so he asked if he could go back, so he's back at corner."

The questions also involved Paterno's feelings on Robert Bolden, and his play as Penn State progresses through the season.

He showed faith in Bolden, but stressed the fact that he needs to "make something happen." He went on to say that he hopes Bolden will make some plays now that he has some experience.

Paterno then said that he doesn't think that there is a fair assessment of the offensive line, and that, particularly in the game against Illinois, that it was the defense that struggled, and that's where the questions should be directed.

Even after his criticism of the defense, Paterno stressed the fact that the offense needs to be making plays down the stretch, and that it would keep Penn State in some games.

"We've got to start making some plays, no question about, even at Iowa, we had two catches, we make those two catches, they keep us in the football game," Paterno said.

One of the questions involved agents in the college football world, and what he thought about the allegations against big schools for paying college athletes.

When he was talking about if Penn State is involved in such acts, Paterno said, "Are you one hundred percent sure that it's not going on? No, I'm not one hundred percent sure.  I'm not going to point fingers at anyone either, I don't think it's happening, but who knows."

He quickly moved on to other questions after his thoughts on agents in college football, and Paterno revisited answering questions about the injuries on the defensive side.

Paterno was careful to point out that he doesn't want to move people around too much, because they start to "get used to each other," and that just because Penn State lost key starters on the defensive side, that is no excuse.

"I'm not going to use that as an excuse, we need to have some people rise to the occasion.  And it'll happen, one of these days, we'll get a couple of guys to make some plays, and they'll start feeling good about themselves, and they'll bring some people with them," Paterno said.

It was certainly an interesting press conference, and it almost always is with Joe Paterno behind the microphone.

One thing we can be sure about after this press conference, Joe Paterno is expecting some big plays down the stretch from his Nittany Lion football team.