Joe Paterno is old. Very old. He’s 84 and people have called for him to step down at Penn State at various points over the past 10 years. I thought he should have stepped down after the team went 3-9 and 4-7 in back-to-back seasons in ’03 and ’04, but he stayed on and the team reeled off three 11-win seasons in their next six years. We also learned that his relatively low annual salary is probably why Penn State hasn’t felt an urgency to get rid of him. Anyway, the same guy who once had this hilarious interview where he claimed he couldn’t hear the radio host for two minutes straight actually uses advanced technology to communicate with recruits.
Penn State Rivals passes along the story of Joe Pa speaking with five-star recruit Noah Spence using Skype. Big Ten Blog share details on the conversation:
“It was [Paterno] and Coach Johnson in his office, right next to each other,” Spence told Rivals.com. “We were in my computer lab — me, my dad and coach. It was real fun. It was entertaining, I didn’t know JoePa was that funny. He’s a real cool guy though. He talked about him being around and everything, which was great, that was our main concern with the program. He talked about me playing early and everything like that. It was nice.”
JoePa using Skype? And being funny and entertaining? You have to be kidding me! This isn’t the first time we heard about Penn State using technology to help the program, but I just can’t picture Paterno using Skype. I’m surprised it wasn’t too confusing for him. I just wonder what his screen name is. JoePapabear84? Joeknowsfootball? Hornedrimglasses4life? Come on Joe, let’s Skype together man, that would make my day!
