Only one day remained before the final game of the season, and Joe Paterno was finally optimistic. His team -- he thinks -- is ready.

“I think they're out of the funk,” the coach of No. 3 Penn State (10-1, 7-1 Big Ten) said Monday. “We had two lousy practices and then yesterday we had a good one. We were tired and heavy-legged, so we practiced for about an hour and 15 minutes. Whether that is good to enough to win the game against a team that is one of the four or five best teams in the country, we'll see.”

The old man still didn't think Nittany Lions receiver Derrick Williams would participate in Tuesday night's Orange Bowl against No. 22 Florida State (8-4, 5-3 Southeastern Conference) -- a game that kicks off at 8 and will be televised nationally on ABC.

“Derrick is one of the better football players in America, one of the best athletes that I have ever coached,” Paterno said. “He could play, but the doctors are concerned that if he banged that elbow up again there may be some nerve damage.”

So far, Paterno felt his players have handled what is for many of them their first bowl game pretty well.

No curfew was enforced for the first several days because Paterno wanted his team “to have a little fun.”

“They had a little fun on the beach, and whatever else,” he said. “I forget what it's like to be 19 or 20 years old, but I'm sure I looked around at some of those bikinis.”

Distractions abound for the Seminoles, though. Coach Bobby Bowden felt his team, which must replace suspended linebacker A.J. Nicholson, was unified in their stance regarding Nicholson's situation.

“The feedback I got was kind of like, 'He should have known better,' not 'Why have they done this to him,' ” Bowden said.

The game, the Lions' first bowl appearance since the Jan. 2003 Capital One Bowl, will be and has been spun as a clash between two of the top coaching legends in college football -- legends united by recent criticism. Florida State enters as ACC Champions, but it is the lowest ranked team in a Bowl Championship Series game.

Paterno and Bowden have both said the attention should not be shone upon them. Instead, it is their respective armies of athletes who deserve all the attention.

Those athletes? All they care about is the game at hand.

“We're excited that we have another challenge in front of us to play again, together,” Lions senior cornerback Alan Zemaitis said. “Any game that we played this year, we go out there to win.”

Reviewing replay?

At next month's American Football Coaches Association meeting, one hot topic of conversation will be the impact of instant replay, which was instituted by nine of 11 NCAA Div. I conferences this season.

Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr expressed his discontent with the replay system after his team's 32-28 loss to Nebraska in the Alamo Bowl last Wednesday night, saying that implementing a coach's challenge would be “fair.”

“I don't know if I would be in favor of it,” Paterno said. “When I was pushing for the ability to review calls -- because we had had a couple of lousy calls that cost us a couple of big football games -- so, I thought if we had had replay and been able to review them we probably could have come out with a couple of big wins.

“But I never want to get into a situation where you are spending a minute and a half, two minutes to review it … I didn't particularly want to be on the sidelines with some coach upstairs telling me 'challenge it, challenge it.' ”

Paterno also said he would contact friends in the National Football League for their opinions regarding coach's challenges before February's coaches meeting in Texas.

Notes

Paterno said neither Lions linebacker Paul Posluszny nor offensive tackle Levi Brown, both juniors, have discussed leaving Penn State a year early with their coach. “I will talk to them when we get back home,” Paterno said … On Nicholson, Paterno said he preferred to not comment out of courtesy. “You like to see players end their college career on a better note.” … Paterno was unaware Lions receiver Deon Butler ran out of gas on his wave runner in the Atlantic Ocean until Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader reporter Jerry Kellar asked the coach about the episode. “Good thing it wasn't you,” Paterno joked. “Because they might have thought it was a whale.” Kellar, a former collegiate offensive lineman at Temple who has covered the Lions for 18 seasons, retorted, “This from a shark.”