You don't see a lot of turnover in the Penn State Athletic Department. The unspoken rule in University Park is once a coach is hired, that coach becomes part of the family.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Penn State football team, whose 10 head and assistant coaches have more than 130 combined years of experience with the Nittany Lions.

And when a coach becomes part of this football family, his biological family, too, is welcomed and embraced. Lifelong friendships are forged and built upon, successes and failures enjoyed and endured together, by wives, sons, daughters and parents.

If you've been around Penn State for even a little while, you come to realize this. And you're able to understand why this summer was one of the most difficult seasons in the football program's 116-year history.

Karen Ganter, the wife of assistant head coach and offensive coordinator Fran Ganter, the mother of sophomore quarterback Chris Ganter and an ardent supporter in countless ways of the football program, died unexpectedly on June 8 at the age of 53 from heart-related causes.

George Paterno, brother of head football coach Joe Paterno and former Penn State football broadcaster, died on June 23 at Centre Community Hospital after suffering a heart attack five days earlier.

The blows kept coming. On July 31, Ganter's mother-in-law, Liz Bruno, died from a heart attack as she was preparing to leave her home in Tennessee to be with the family.

As if these three tragedies weren't enough, the lions were still trying to recover from two tragic losses from this past winter. Kevin Dare, the brother of senior cornerback Eric Dare and a Penn State track star, died in a pole vaulting accident in February. Junior fullback Sean McHugh's mother Jeanne died of ovarian cancer in February.

In addition to the families of the deceased, the losses have rattled the Penn State football family as well, from the 19-year-old members of the scout team to the 74-year-old head coach.

"It has been a tough year," Paterno said during Football Media Day in August. "We go back to the Kevin Dare kid and Sean McHugh's mom ... I don't even like to think about it ... lt was a very emotional thing and it is going to continue to be that way for awhile. It takes awhile."

Facing off-the-field adversity is nothing new for Paterno. In October of 2000, freshman defensive back Adam Taliaferro sustained a severe spinal injury during a game at Ohio State.

Taliaferro would make a triumphant recovery, running out of the tunnel during Penn State's home opener in 2001, but his injury took its toll on Paterno.

And when the towers fell on Sept. 11, the native of Brooklyn, who still has plenty of friends in New York, was among the first to admit that football was, for a change, far from the first thing on his mind.

Losing a brother, however, is different from visiting a player in the hospital.

Helping his players deal with any loss is a difficulty many coaches must face. But never has this team had to deal with this much in such a short amount of time.

And another college football season, as sure as the coloring of the trees on Mount Nittany, rolls in with autumn. And the beat must go on.

Jay Paterno, Penn State's quarterbacks coach and Joe's youngest son, knows the troubles his father has had to face. He knows that Taliaferro's injury reminded his father of a day 25 years before, when Jay's brother David suffered a severe injury in a trampoline accident and was in a coma for nearly a week.

He understands, as his father does, the risk coaches run every day by sending their players into battle in the fiercest collision sport in collegiate athletics. But he also knows that Joe Paterno has been the type of person to help others through times of trouble.

"He is one of those people that when he gets in front of the team," said Jay of his father earlier this summer "He becomes a very even-keeled guy. You might not know that, but he is pretty even-keeled."

Paterno and the Lions will take the field Saturday against Central Florida, trying to put two consecutive losing seasons behind them. The burdens, however, will be that much greater this season. For Ganter.

"Obviously, it is not going to be easy for him," Paterno said at Media Day. "He has had two tough, tough blows. He is such a solid guy and his kids are so solid I have talked to him and told him to come to me if there is anything he wants different.

"He said that he thinks he has it organized and is OK. I think we are OK that way."

It won't be an easy season for Paterno either. Despite being polar opposites in many ways, he and George were extremely close -- he even tried to get his brother on his staff. And shortly before his death, George, who never married and whose health was declining, had moved from New York to State College so Joe and his wife, Sue, could take care of him.

Nor will this season be easy for the McHughs, or the Dares. Nor for the rest of the football family, who wept with their teammates and coaches at too many funerals this summer and have put aside their own sorrow to lend loving support.

The summer has undoubtedly changed the Lions' outlook on the coming season.

"When you deal with death, you realize there's more than football," said senior defensive tackle Jimmy Kennedy the team's undisputed locker room leader. "I mean, Coach Ganter lost his wife, and he lost his mother-in-law. This group is more than a football team, it's like a family.

"We realized we'd have to be there for each other. I know if I lost someone, I'd want my teammates to be in my corner. And that's what we did we tried to do is be in their corner and help them get through it."

The coaches, many of whom are father figures for their players already, will be counted on even more to lend guidance and support, no matter what direction the season takes.

But, as Kennedy pointed out, it can be difficult for the 20-something players to lend the same kind of emotional support to men two or three times their age.

"We let the coaches do more for the coaches," Kennedy said. "It's hard for me to say whether Coach Ganter is having a bad day. I know him as a coach or as a person, but I wouldn't know him as well as a running back coach would."

The lions will have to be there for each other this season, and it is a trickle-down effect that starts, like nearly every other aspect of the football program, with Paterno.

"He has been great. I think he is the type of person that is always looking for the next challenge," Jay Paterno said.

"He has us focused on the next challenge, and that has been a stabilizing force."

The memories of the family that the Penn State football family said farewell to this summer will be very much in the hearts and the minds of the team.

As Paterno said, it will take a while. But then again, that's what family is for.