STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) \u2014 Joe Paterno isn\u2019t about to lobby for instant replay in college football, even though he was upset enough with some calls Saturday to chase down the officials after the game.
\nInstead, Paterno said Tuesday that he\u2019s more interested in making sure his team doesn\u2019t replay its slow start against Iowa when No. 19 Penn State travels to Wisconsin this Saturday.
\nDuring Monday\u2019s practice, Paterno told the Nittany Lions (3-1, 0-1 Big Ten) they would need a more consistent effort if they\u2019re going to win at 20th-ranked Wisconsin on Saturday.
\n\u201cHe said you can\u2019t win a football game if you only play one quarter of the game,\u201d punter David Royer said.
\nNot that the Nittany Lions didn\u2019t try. After falling behind 23-0 in the second quarter, Penn State trailed 35-13 midway through the fourth quarter before scoring three touchdowns to force overtime.
\nIt was the second time this year that Penn State has gotten off to a slow start. The Nittany Lions looked stunned in their season-opener against Central Florida when they led just 13-9 at halftime.
\nPaterno blamed the slow start Saturday on mistakes early in the game.
\n\u201cI think early we were sloppy,\u201d Paterno said. \u201cWe fumbled on our own 18, which gave them a chance to go ahead 17-nothing. I thought we were sloppy, but I thought we played hard.\u201d
\nPaterno would like to see the sloppy play cleared up. What he doesn\u2019t want to see is a lot of blaming and finger pointing among his players.
\nThat\u2019s a legitimate concern at Penn State, which struggled to gel during the last two seasons \u2014 the only back-to-back losing seasons in the Paterno era. Those worries appeared long gone after Penn State\u2019s 3-0 start, including a 40-7 rout of then-No. 8 Nebraska, but Paterno reminded his players Monday that they needed to stick together in order to win again.
\n\u201cJoe said just stay together. We don\u2019t want any finger-pointing,\u201d tight end Casey Williams said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to learn how to win and learn how to lose. You can\u2019t just dig a hole and hide just because you lost one game.\u201d
\nAs for Paterno, he\u2019s not going to point fingers either, despite how upset he was about a couple of calls that went against the Nittany Lions in overtime against Iowa. After the game, Paterno \u2014 who\u2019ll turn 76 in December \u2014 raced down the field and caught up with referee Dick Honig, grabbing Honig\u2019s jersey to complain about the calls.
\n\u201cI think most of you who\u2019ve known me through the years know I\u2019ve very rarely griped about officials, if ever,\u201d Paterno said. \u201cI\u2019ve never blamed officials for losing a game or whatever, so I\u2019m not going to get into that now.\u201d
\nAsked if he would support instant replay on controversial calls, Paterno said he did not think that would solve anything.
\n\u201cWhen I do watch a pro game and I see that official stick his head in that \u2014 whatever they call that thing \u2014 the games are long enough, and sometimes I\u2019m not sure they can make a decision when they look at the replay,\u201d Paterno said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what it\u2019s going to do for us. Unless someone can prove to me it\u2019s really going to change the game for the better, I\u2019d rather not do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) \u2014 Joe Paterno isn\u2019t about to lobby for instant replay in college football, even though he was upset enough with some calls Saturday to chase down the officials after the game. Instead, Paterno said Tuesday that he\u2019s more interested in making sure his team doesn\u2019t replay its slow start against Iowa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}