With tough losses come tough new questions

Losing never gets old for some guys, just harder and harder to deal with.

Great coaches are like great athletes that way. They don't always know when to say when. It's why one old friend doesn't know what to say to Joe Paterno.

"We haven't talked at all," Bobby Bowden said, "probably because Joe's like me. It's one of those things where you're almost so embarrassed, you just wouldn't know what to talk about."

People who hoped to get through a week without seeing the words "Paterno" and "troubled" in the same sentence again -- including JoePa himself -- won't get their wish.

On Sunday, one Philadelphia daily newspaper posted this question about Penn State's venerable football coach on the front of its sports Web site: "Should Paterno retire? Participate in a poll about whether it's time for Joe to go."

Philly being such a tough town, that was actually an improvement from earlier in the week, when the town's other daily skipped the voting altogether and went straight to the back-page with, "Joe Must Go." And that was before Saturday's kick-in-the-gut loss to Ohio State.

"I'm physically and emotionally drained," Paterno said after watching David Kimball's 60-yard field-goal try on the final play land just short and wide right. "It's been a long week."

And from the look of things, they will only get longer.

They're piling up

The losses are mounting at Penn State in the 38th year of Paterno's tenure. Saturday was the Nittany Lions' seventh in nine games and their fifth in a row, the longest such streak since Paterno took over at State College. It also guaranteed his third losing season in the last four. Another conference loss will be the most by any of his teams since joining the Big Ten in 1993. A few more would make this team the losingest in the 117-year history of the program.

And as the losses have piled up, so have the questions.

It started with doubts about Paterno's decisions on personnel, play-calling and clock management in big games. Five alcohol-related incidents involving players since the season began have some asking whether a coach who defined the term "old school" can still cope with the "me-first" generation -- and why Paterno, who turns 77 in December, would even want to.

His answer last week was revealing.

"It's tough. But what are you going to do about it?" Paterno said. "I can go home and cry, or I can come out of the closet fighting."

Bowden sees a dip

Bowden, who turns 74 on Saturday, saw his own fortunes dip the last two seasons at Florida State and faced some of the same questions. He'd lost valuable assistants off his staff, got swept up by family and team disciplinary matters and the product on the field began to slip.

What Bowden did was recruit as hard as ever and refocus his energies, starting out by climbing down from the tower in practice more and more. The lull turned out to be mercifully short. On Saturday, his third-ranked Seminoles beat Notre Dame handily to stay in the national title chase, at the same time widening Bowden's lead over Paterno (340-338) in their long-standing rivalry to see which will retire as the victory leader in major college football.

Still, Bowden knows better than to offer any advice.

"I don't think anything I can say would be appropriate," he said. "I think as highly of Joe as any coach I've ever known -- and I'm going to leave it at that."

Paterno should be so lucky.

His contract runs through the end of next season, but Paterno's critics won't be quieted anytime soon. He's talked about coaching another three to five years after that, but if it's still the case, he would be wise to keep those plans to himself -- at least for the time being.

No one has earned the right to say when more than Paterno. He hasn't lost his brains or his nerve, just some perspective.

Ever since Penn State moved into the Big Ten, the competition for wins and topflight recruits has gotten much tougher. It's hardly coincidental that Bowden won almost two dozen more games over that same stretch while dominating the ACC, where Florida State has gone 89-5 and won 11 championships in 12 years.

If Paterno intends to get hold of his program and climb back into that race, he'd better get started soon. Whether -- where -- he'll find the strength remains anyone's guess. A month ago, after a close loss to Wisconsin, someone asked Paterno what he told his team.

"I said I hope you guys understand if you stick together and keep hustling something good will happen one of these days," he replied. "Let's come in on Monday, and let's go back to work and we'll go from there."

But what he said a moment later was much more revealing.

"I'm more worried," Paterno said, "about my morale."

And he's not the only one.

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.