Joe to Go after Next Season?

The following exchange is from Ray Fittipaldo’s Q&A in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today:

TonyO: Cheer up Ray. JoePa HAS to retire one of these years. Then we won’t have to put up with this crap!

Ray Fittipaldo: It looks like they’re going to make him hang it up after next year, the final year of his contract, whether he wants to go or not. At least that’s the word from people around the program. I’ll believe it when I see it. I still think he coaches until he’s 100.

This Turkey agrees with Fittipaldo. “People around the program” are having a big pipe dream, if not collective dissociative disorder, if they think that the administration can convince Paterno, who apparently runs the university, to hang up the spikes. Past performance evidenced by the 2004 peri-Thanksgiving visit to Paterno’s house by Spanier and Curley suggests that the most the administration will be able to do is recommend that Joe not ask for a contract renewal, after which they’ll be shown the door and told to be good boys and behave while Dad goes on about his business.

Joe will leave when he is ready to leave.