Supposedly, history of a JoePa kind was going to happen here Saturday.
Supposedly, the Paterno family scarfed up hundreds of tickets, so all the kids and grandkids and cousins and closest friends could bear witness.
Supposedly, the band had been instructed that it would not perform at halftime, preempted by a surprise, special event.
Supposedly, JoePa himself was going to bypass the media and make an announcement (you know which announcement) directly to the crowd.
And then a spaceship (or the Life Lion) was going to land on the Beaver Stadium field and take Joe away to single-wingland.
Or Brooklyn. Or something.
Supposedly.
The JoePa retirement rumors persist, despite Paterno's just-as-persistent denials, the most emphatic of which came at Friday's pep rally. Paterno spoke for 15 minutes, relying on his cane only for punctuation, and vowed to, "run out of that tunnel next year."
"No matter what you read," he added, "no matter what you think, I'm not going away."
He amplified, just a little, after Saturday's game.
"I'm planning on coming back," he told the media. "I never planned otherwise."
Paterno said he plans to sit down with athletic director Tim Curley and university president Graham Spanier soon and talk about, "what they think of this, what they think of that."
Meaning his future, apparently.
"I have no plans to leave," he said. "We'll see what happens."
Sometime very soon, perhaps even as you read this, Paterno will get the surgery required to make his ailing right hip and leg livable. Barring a dramatic and unforeseeable circumstance, Paterno will be Penn State's head coach next year.
So let's forget whether he will retire. He won't. Let's look at the more important question: Should he?
Let's start with the negatives: Yes, he's 82 years old, and that makes this essentially uncharted territory. He can be a stubborn, anachronistic man. He clearly is doing less actual coaching than ever.
A post-surgery rehabilitation of any length would make it unlikely that Paterno could contribute to Penn State's recruiting this winter, or even make the appearances required of head coaches during bowl weeks.
The positives: They're 12-1, people. They've never had more athletes, and they've never found a greater variety of ways to use them. Which is to say they're sound and fun to watch.
They've won 40 of their last 50 games. The current four-year seniors have won the Big Ten twice.
They played a turnover-free game Saturday, with just 38 yards in penalties. It's unlikely that any major-college team has made fewer sloppy mistakes.
I know what you're thinking: All that's because he's not involved much anymore. It's in spite of him, not because of him.
There's no doubt some truth to that. Defensive coordinator Tom Bradley is more the head coach in many substantive ways than ever, including taking the Gatorade shower Saturday.
This isn't entirely fair to Bradley, but he not only isn't publicly complaining, he doesn't seem interested in going elsewhere. There are three former major-college coaches on the staff, Dick Anderson, Galen Hall and Ron Vanderlinden. They don't appear to be circulating resumes, either.
Undeniably, this situation is weird. It has dysfunction written all over it, except that it functions, somehow.
Yes, your correspondent is the same guy who strongly suggested, four years ago in this space, that Joe should go. That was after the Lions went 3-9 and 4-7 in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
It wasn't just the won-loss record. It was the mess of the program in a dozen ways — recruiting, player development, endless sloppiness on the field, criminality off it, and arrogant bullheadedness of approach.
(No, the criminality hasn't gone away, but there hasn't been any lately, and the net effect of the past year's suspensions and defections has been to purge bad stuff from the system.)
I didn't think Joe was capable of making changes he's clearly made. He's become the Ronald Reagan of college football, meaning he can delegate and stand back.
There's also this, from senior safety Anthony Scirrotto, reflecting on the evident tears in a lot of eyes in the pre-game locker room: "We really love him like a father."
If you're not into the mushy stuff, consider the hard bottom line. If everything about Penn State football as it is in November of 2008, including the looming surgery, was exactly the same, except the head coach was 62 instead of 82, would anyone in their right minds be suggesting he be shown the door?
No.
Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
