Three N Out

JoePa is now officially a case study. SI.com reports that PSU has started enrolling for a course that studies JoePa's relation with the media.

Can you say awesomeness incarnate? As a comm major, I'd be in that class before you could say "enroll me."

"There's a reason that Joe, more than any other college coach, does what he does," said Poorman, who has written about Paterno and the team since 1979. "Whether talking to the media, delivering a corporate address or interacting with his staff ... it's meticulous. There's a reason why he does everything."

Poorman said he hasn't talked to Paterno directly about the class, though he received word through the coach's family that he is OK with the endeavor.

Paterno's son and quarterbacks coach, Jay Paterno, said Thursday night his father's initial reaction was "What would they want to possibly do a course about me for?"

Another focus of the class is the evolution of sports journalism into a fast-paced, Internet-driven media marketplace.

A weekly in-season news conference once meant Paterno talked with six reporters around a table, no microphone or TV camera in sight. Paterno knew every reporter's name on the beat, Poorman said.

Today, remarks can spread quickly through blogs and Web chat rooms, not to mention the live broadcasts over the radio. Now Paterno sits at a table overlooking a Beaver Stadium media room with more than a dozen reporters, with at least another dozen asking questions via teleconference.

"There are very few people in the same job, the same role, the same company" for the length of time that Paterno has been at Penn State, Jay Paterno said about his father. "He's the perfect person to study the changing media."

Personally I love how JoePa handles the media. Between him being a coy smart@#$ to them and the fact that you always need to fear for your life when in an interview with him, that class would have probably been retaken each semester just to keep me sane.