Joe Paterno: Big Ten must pick carefully

Associated Press

Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who wed the former Suzanne Pohland in 1962, knows a thing or two about what makes a successful marriage.

So he recognizes how important it is for the Big Ten to pick the right partner or partners if it expands from its current 11 teams.

“The thing that you have to do is when you get married, you’d better marry somebody you love,” the 83-year-old Paterno said Tuesday during spring drills for his 45th season as head coach. “That means somebody who appreciates what you want to do.”

The Big Ten is exploring the possibility of expanding. Paterno said the conference cannot add schools just to get bigger but needs to invite like-minded institutions.

“So we can really mesh. That it’s going to be a happy marriage, and we’re all on the same page and nobody dominates it,” Paterno said on a Big Ten coaches teleconference. “It’s not a question of just bringing somebody in that you’re just going to kick around. It’s a question of bringing someone in who can handle the academics, the research, AAU schools, people with a commitment to the women’s sports, a commitment to all sports programs, a commitment to the ideals of what intercollegiate athletics should be all about.”

The conference made its trademark name into a misnomer when it added an 11th school, Penn State, in 1993.

Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald said he’s OK if the Big Ten doesn’t budge.

“I’m more of a traditionalist,” Fitzgerald said. “We need to be sure we know where the landscape is going to go in college football. But I am not, for one, saying we have to keep up with the Joneses. The Big Ten product is as competitive as it’s ever been. At this point, if we’re going to add a team or teams, it needs to be the significance of when we added Penn State.”

Paterno said that no administrators have asked him about his thinking on the subject of expansion, but he would favor the Big Ten adding at least one team in the East to help broaden the appeal to television audiences. More members would mean a lucrative and attention-drawing conference championship in football.

“Can you find one, two, three, four? I don’t know,” he said. “That’s up to some people that are outside my realm.”