I'm out west, in Pac 10 country, so I'm not as interested as some of you, especially those in FL. Again, kudo's for the teams scheduling each other early in the season!
What a great game!
The rivalry, while still big in Florida, has certainly lost its luster nationally over the past several years. Neither team has seriously challenged for a national title since the beginning part of the decade, and I suspect that trend to continue this season. Nonetheless, it certainly was an entertaining game.
They used to play later in the year (i.e. around November), but felt that by moving the game to the early part of the season, the loser of the game, could recover and get back into the national championship picture (in college football, always better to loose early (like Florida did last year) than late (like Alabama loosing to Florida in the SEC Championship game). You can recover from a September/October loss and still win a championship; harder to recover from a November/December loss.
still coaching? Bowden is almost 80 and Paterno will be 83 soon.
Are they trying to set the record for most wins by a Div. 1 coach, knowing it may never be broken? Do they hate each other and don't want to see the other guy set the record?
Paul Bear Bryant announced that he would retire at the end of the 1982 season (he was only 70). Less than a month after he coached his last game, he was dead.
There is nothing worse in life than waking up in the morning and having nothing to do. I really believe that Paterno and Bowden are afraid of suffering a similar fate as Bryant. Football keeps them going and viable.
That's a sample of ONE! That's not a good statistic to base anything on. Furthermore, the implied cause and effect is rather spurious, to say the least.
Bowden's retirement and successor is already in place. Paterno has become somewhat senile, and with his power at PSU, he will never retire. Football at Penn State will continue with or without him, because the assistants are really good and the recruiting base is one of the best in the country. Paterno will stop coaching when he croaks.