Joe Paterno Injury Update - 11/6/06

Joe Paterno elected to have surgery on Sunday to speed up the recovery of his injured knee.

Joe is scheduled to be released from the hospital some time today and expects to coach this weekend against Temple, but nobody is sure if he will be in the press box or the sideline. He will be fitted with a leg brace and most likely be on crutches.

For his own safety, I hope he reconsiders being on the sideline. With 200-300 lb guys running around at full speed not always watching what's in front of them the sidelines of a college football game can be a dangerous place. You have to be able to react quickly to get out of the way of oncoming plays. Paterno isn't capable of doing that now that he's 80 years old. The knee brace only makes things worse. If I were athletic director Tim Curley or defensive coordinator Tom Bradley I would grab a couple of big redshirt freshmen and tell them their job is to stand on either side of Paterno and either pick him up and move him or stand in the way of any oncoming plays. If he keeps taking hits like he did in practice earlier this year and like he did on Saturday, one of these days he's going to get more seriously hurt.