Joe Paterno Football Quotations

You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That's the mark of a true professional.

You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you'll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.

Here, I have an opportunity to affect the lives of a lot of young people - and not just on my football team. I'm not kidding myself that that would be true at the professional level.

One play here or one play there and they could have had it, but we got it. It was a great football game with two teams playing as hard as they can play, and it came down to one play.

He has not gotten quite the credit he should get because he literally has carried this football team. He's made some great drives for us and he's a heck of a player.

He is a good football player. He is not a great football player. But the fact that he has gone through this I think has helped him with some other kids. He has been able to go to other kids and talk to them a little.

He could play, but the doctors think there could be some nerve damage if he bangs that elbow again. It's not worth the risk. He's too good of a football player with too much ahead of him to take that kind of chance. It's a big loss for us because he's one of the great players in America. He and Michael Robinson are probably the two guys who turned the program around. That and the fact that we're still playing good on defense.

We came close to being an undefeated football team.

They have a great tailback, ... Last year they had two great tailbacks. They make up their minds they are going to run and intimidate you. When your offense (goes for over 550) yards against a team like Purdue, they are a heck of an offensive football team.

It was a great football game. I'm glad we won, but we're very humbled. One play here, one play there and it could have turned out different.

I'm fairly optimistic we're gonna be a decent football team.

I don't think there's any football player who's done more to rejuvenate a squad than Michael Robinson has done. Michael Robinson is one of the greatest football players I've ever coached and I've coached a couple of pretty good ones.

I don't look at it as something personal. All I wanted to do was make sure everyone knew that we have a good football team.

Sport is a product of human culture. America seems to need football at this state of our social development. When you get ninety million people watching a single game on television, it ... shows you that people need something to identify with.

When a kid plays football before he attends a class, something is wrong.

There's never been a greater game than football.

I still haven't gotten that little something out of my system that I'm still not a kid going to a football game. I'm excited.

SMU: 'It's unbelievable to think that kind of corruption came right from the top of the power structure. The NCAA did what it had to do' in canceling SMU's 1988 football season.

They ask me what I'd like written about me when I'm gone. I hope they write I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach.