Growing up in Brooklyn, Joe Paterno had little exposure to the more rural aspects of life. He doesn't golf, is bored by fishing and hates mowing the lawn -- running out of the tunnel and onto the Beaver Stadium turf seems to be the extent of his communing with nature.

As much as the public and media want to encapsulate the Jan. 3 Orange Bowl around the careers of Penn State coach Joe Paterno and Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, the two most winning coaches in college football history know it is what takes place between the white lines that will ultimately last.

The 2005 Orange Bowl has been pre-classified as a dinosaur duel, a fight between two legends towards the end of their careers.

Former Penn State women's basketball player Courtney Wicks defended ex-Lady Lion Jen Harris yesterday, saying Penn State women's basketball coach Rene Portland made anti-lesbian remarks toward her while she was on the squad.

ESPN weighed in on the ongoing war of words between Jen Harris and Rene Portland — the latest step in a publicity war between the former Penn State women’s basketball player and her former head coach.
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Seven-hundred-and-fifty-two miles separate Tennessee and Pennsylvania, but only a few feet will separate their volleyball teams on the court today. The connections between both states' volleyball teams, though, have been years in the making.

Somewhere in the room where Penn State women's basketball coach Rene Portland keeps the archives of game footage she's accumulated over the years, one tape sits alone: last year's 78-70 loss to Liberty in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

As if they hadn't had enough basketball for the night, some of the players on the Penn State men's basketball team were watching another game following their 75-71 win vs. Missouri-Kansas City on Wednesday.

Penn State head coach Troy Sunderland and the Penn State wrestling team will have its first road dual at a place Sunderland used to call home.

The Blue and White have gone orange -- completely.

In early April 1999, Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley met with the ownership group of the newly founded Altoona Curve and proposed the idea of a minor league baseball team in State College to draw upon the success of the university.

Two years removed from its national championship in 2004, the Penn State men's gymnastics team will hardly resemble that stellar squad when it takes to the floor for the upcoming season.

Many may not know it, but the Ice Lions of Penn State are ranked No. 2 in the Northeastern Region of the American Collegiate Hockey Association. The reason that many students at Penn State would not know this is because the Ice Lions play second fiddle to the ACHA Division I Icers.

While the Penn State men's basketball team isn't desperate for some help in the middle, they would certainly welcome it.

This is more than just a pony ride on this merry-go-round called life.

There will be a Penn State team in Arizona during the first week of January after all.

There will be no snow at this Christmas Eve gathering. South Florida is not the place for rum-spiked egg nog, corny reindeer sweaters or extended family reunions, yet a family of a different sort will spend the holidays together this Dec. 24.

Sooner or later, Amanda Brown might call for the ball underneath the basket -- and not get it.

The first shock came from Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez in early August. After 16 years commanding the Badger football team, Alvarez would be done after 2005.

In 1962, a young football coach at Howard College in Birmingham, Ala., took a train to Lewistown and hitchhiked to State College to meet then Penn State football coach Rip Engle.

This November, while Penn State was completing its revival from a seemingly interminable funk, Florida State was falling into a miniature slump of its own.

My Opinion: Tim Ford

My Opinion: Mark Ludwiczak

USG restructuring plan fails to incorporate ideas that represent students

My Opinion: Bridget Smith

• Spanier's statements polarize community
• Plan B prescriptions filled at many places
• Political correctness takes over Christmas
• Pearl Harbor attack deserves recognition
• Stores should fill all Plan B prescriptions
• Thon children benefit from fraternity work
• Local parking meters need more updates
• Lottery system in need of some improvements
• Bowls neglect students; try to please sponsors
• Police should prosecute all bowl ticket scalpers
• Season ticket holders should go to Miami
• Student ticket scalpers ruin bowl experiences

Just Friends illustrates the average feelings of a boy who is secretly pining away for a girl but having to be classified as "her friend," until the magical Romeo and Juliet revelation occurs.

Let me paint a picture for you -- you're in college and you're broke. You've had a summer job here and there, but you still have the same savings account you opened with your piggybank money when you were 10 -- the one your parents filter money into each month for rent and "living expenses." You expect to graduate and have your financial problems to sort themselves out. You couldn't be more naïve.

We're at a point where unemployed cavemen pedal credit cards on TV, Tyra Banks has not one, but two, programs of her own, and Lindsay Lohan is, for some reason, famous. No wonder D4L's "Laffy Taffy," a song whose badness was practically inconceivable even 10 short years ago, has captured the hearts and minds of our great nation.

"What language do you speak?" asks Shakira on the opening track of her new album Oral Fixation, Vol. 2. For the small-in-stature Latin bombshell, the answer to that question has been pretty open-ended the past few years -- her last release being the all-Spanish first half of the double album, Fijación Oral, Vol 1. Before that, it was her English language debut, Laundry Service.

Aeon Flux, which stars Charlize Theron as an acrobatic assassin, arrived in theaters this month, ending the wait for fans of the original series.

Jens Lekman's music sounds like a crescent moon over a field of frozen dandelions, possessed with an uncommonly stark, ethereal beauty. He's an impeccable pop tunesmith, a first-rate arranger and the best thing to come out of Sweden since Ace of Base.

Loss and hope, confinement and liberation, and human relationships and anger are only some of the themes explored through dance in the upcoming show Eclectic Expressions: Sensational Selections of Integrated Movements.

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