CHICAGO - Joe Paterno left a lot of things up in the air after his press conference yesterday at the opening day of the Big Ten Conference Kickoff Luncheon.
The quarterback situation, for instance, to which his final answer was "[Michael] Robinson's gonna play an awful lot of football; [Zack] Mills is gonna play an awful lot of football."
Or how the offense will be under new offensive coordinator Galen Hall, to which he remarked "We'll have to wait and see."
And after projecting that the team would be better this fall, he added, "How much better? One game better? Who knows?"
But on the most personal of all issues -- the criticism that he's past his prime -- Paterno had an unmistakably clear response.
"I know who I am and what I can do and none of that stuff's ever gonna bother me," he said. "A lot of people are out there saying, 'He's ready to be buried.' I don't think I'm ready to be buried."
Not that it's a surprise to hear him say that. He has a four-year contract extension that will keep him coaching until he's an octogenarian, and a belief that he's still got one more great team -- national championship-type great -- left in him. He still, however, knows that he's under scrutiny, and that he has some explaining to do.
So while the 10 other conference coaches -- even Ron Turner from Illinois and Gerry DiNardo from Indiana -- got to chat about new quarterbacks and running games and offseason workouts, Paterno spent more time than not addressing why last year happened and whether or not it could happen again.
"I think that I just didn't do a really good job," he said. "Maybe if I had done some other things, we might have been able to at least have a couple of wins. There were some personal things that had happened to me; my brother dying set me back a year. That's the way it went; I wasn't able to get some things done."
And while Glen Mason of Minnesota beamed about his program's transformation into a team that has been to bowls four times in the last five years and Kirk Ferentz noted that the focus at Iowa is on becoming a Top 25 program, Paterno highlighted Penn State's slip in the Big Ten standings.
"I said to myself, 'How did you get here?' " he said, holding his left hand, representing Penn State, about a foot or so below his right, indicating the top of the conference. "Was it the other guy? Was it us? And it's a combination of both.
"But now you gotta make up your mind -- how do you get back up there? We gotta find our way to get ourselves up there where Penn State belongs."
Restricted Recruiting
With the NCAA looking to restrict the lavish, and at times, illegal, nature of college recruiting by imposing restrictions on how colleges can treat high school recruits, most of the Big Ten coaches said that the new regulations would not affect their processes.
"We put them in a dorm; they may sleep on a cot," Paterno said.
One coach who will be affected, however, is Tiller, who often has recruits specially flown in due to the lack of commercial air service to West Lafayette, Ind. Interestingly, DiNardo, who noted that he would not be affected, opposed the changes. "Recruiting has gotten better, not worse," he said. "It'd be a shame if we overreacted and changed it drastically."
Place your bets
The Big Ten Conference announced its pre-season picks, as voted by the media. Defending conference champion Michigan was again dubbed the favorite, Ohio State was second and Iowa third. Only the top three teams were announced.
Purdue quarterback Kyle Orton was named the Preseason Offensive Player of the Year, while Ohio State linebacker A.J. Hawk was named the Preseason Defensive Player of the Year.
Let's talk about quarterbacks
Around the conference, this is the year of the new quarterback, as six Big Ten schools will be ushering in a new signal caller come fall. The shoes are big to fill -- departees include Michigan's John Navarre, Michigan State's Jeff Smoker and Ohio State's Craig Krenzel -- and as a result, coaches betrayed a bit of apprehension.
"Anytime you try to replace a guy that is that productive, that accurate, it's hard," Michigan State coach John L. Smith said.
Though six teams are united in the task of initiating a new man under center, none is quite comfortable with it.
"It's never a good year to transition your quarterback," Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said.
One team that should be without quarterback strife is Purdue, which welcomes back senior Kyle Orton, the leading returnee in the conference in passing yards, passing efficiency and total offense. Purdue coach Joe Tiller likened Orton's arm strength to that of Drew Bledsoe and has a simple but telling offensive plan for this season: "We'll throw it till we get hot, and when we get hot, we're gonna throw it."
Quotable
Tiller: "Those of you who have heard me address this group in the past all know that I would rather be fly-fishing."
Mason: "We won 10 games last season, and we're not really happy about that."
