Joe Paterno sat down after Saturday's season opener against Coastal Carolina and first remarked how it was nice to be in air conditioning after spending more than three hours pacing the sidelines on a muggy afternoon.
Then he asked if the lighting in the media room was different, putting his hand above his squinting eyes and noting it was difficult to see the back of the room.
A few minutes into the press conference, he pulled out a handkerchief to dab at the sweat covering his face. His sleeves were rolled up, his plain blue tie was loosened and a bottle of water was at his right.
This was somebody hardly concerned with moving into a tie with Florida State coach Bobby Bowden as the all-time wins leader among major college football coaches.
"I haven't even thought about it, and I'm not going to," Paterno said after the 373rd victory of his career, a 66-10 dismantling of Coastal Carolina. "I can only say it so many times, it's not a big deal to me."
Bowden and Paterno, contemporaries who are close friends in the coaching fraternity, figure to be volleying the top spot among the wins list most of the season. Paterno had the chance to tie Bowden only because Florida State was idle, and each coach will have an opportunity to take sole possession of the record Saturday.
Penn State plays Oregon State, and Florida State plays Western Carolina.
Bowden passed Paterno Oct. 26, 2003, as Penn State was mired in a substandard slide. From 2000 to the end of the 2003 season, the Nittany Lions were 22-26. Florida State and Bowden went 38-14 during the same stretch.
"If it weren't for a couple of those losing seasons we had, Joe would be far ahead of him already," Penn State football historian Lou Prato said.
Bowden's win total comes with a bit of a caveat in that the NCAA counts Bowden's 31 wins when he coached what is now Samford University. Samford did not play major college football at the time but is now a member of the Football Championship Subdivision.
"I'm not saying the NCAA changed the rules specifically to benefit Bobby, but the rules definitely benefited him," Prato said.
The back-and-forth between Bowden and Paterno remains a non-issue for the two central figures. Paterno has brushed off the topic, and Bowden doesn't address it often.
"I have a great deal of respect for Joe and wouldn't want anyone else at the top," Bowden said in August. "There's nobody behind us, so it's going to be one of us. There couldn't be a better person to finish with more wins than me. ... I've never lost a minute of sleep over who was at the top, and if he finishes with more wins, I still won't lose a minute."
Linebacker Chris Colasanti and tight end Mickey Shuler Jr. were both aware their coach was nearing in on tying Bowden.
Shuler's father played for Paterno, and Penn State's current tight end remembers watching Paterno eclipse Paul "Bear" Bryant's total with win No. 324.
Like Colasanti, he also placed more emphasis on the record than his head coach.
"I'd like him to get that record and be part of it and be the team that could put him over the top," Shuler Jr. said. "That would be nice. ... In the back of our minds I'm sure we'd all like to do that and give him that win."
