Friday, October 10, 2003

By Chuck Finder, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Joe Paterno told ESPN he regretted the incident last year when he angrily grabbed referee Dick Honig immediately after the Iowa-Penn State game -- one of his many 2002 disagreements with officials that eventually prompted Penn State to seek a Big Ten study of conference officiating.

"If I had to do it over, I should have kept my mouth shut," Paterno said from his desk in an on-camera interview that appears in the last quarter-hour of ESPN's "The Season: Paterno" show to air at 7 p.m. tonight. "I should have been a little more, 'Hey, calm down, let this go.' "

Paterno, his wife, Sue, his son and quarterback coach, Jay, along with several former players were interviewed last season and this past off-season, a time when Paterno never before professed such regret in the media.

The hour-long show, which is mostly complimentary of Paterno's half-century at Penn State, also includes interviews of such former Nittany Lions players as Franco Harris, Jack Ham, Mike Reid, Matt Millen and Todd Blackledge.

Paterno, using off-color language by today's standards, described his ethnic Brooklyn background: "We're all struggling families, holding our own. It was Jews, there were Irishmen and Germans and Italians and the whole bit. To me, diversity was ... I don't know. We had a kid, Sammy Finkletstein, the best punch-ball player we had on the team. Every night at 5 o'clock, Sammy would have to leave. He had to go to ... Jewish church school. So, you know, we might have said, 'We'll see you, Kikey.' And he might have said, 'Well, you Wops stay and play.' You know, it was done. We loved each other and respected each other."

While speaking of the death last year of younger brother George, Paterno also said: "I do, I think of my mortality. I think anybody, when you get to a certain age, you start to think about it. I'm not ... I'm ... I think it was Tennessee Williams who said, he knew everybody was mortal, but he thought he was the exception."

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