Normally, when visiting coaches hold their interview sessions with reporters at Kinnick Stadium, they step onto an elevated platform and stand while fielding questions for 10 to 15 minutes.

This time, they had a chair and a table set up for 76-year-old Joe Paterno, whose Penn State team—a bad Penn State team, by the way—had just lost to Iowa, 26-14.

A couple dozen reporters waited patiently for Paterno, who would be holding what likely was his last postgame interview in Iowa City.

Iowa plays at Penn State next season, but the teams don’t meet in either 2005 or 2006.

By that time, Paterno will be approaching his 80^th birthday.

A reporter who apparently covers Paterno regularly wanted to make a deal. He had a question for the coach, but didn’t want to ask it.

"I’ll buy dinner tonight for anyone who asks it," the guy said.

[That kind of thing happens sometimes in the interview room—especially when the team is going poorly and the reporter is intimidated by the coach].

No one took the guy up on the offer of dinner. Oh, well, I’m sure nearly everyone was on an expense account anyway.

The first time I ever covered Paterno was in a game Penn State played at Ohio State when Woody Hayes was still coaching the Buckeyes. Penn State hadn’t yet joined the Big Ten, but it was a huge game nonetheless.

Ohio State won, but Paterno—then wearing a dress shirt, necktie, wool sportcoat, gray slacks and football shoes—started his postgame interview by saying, "I thought we were going to win the game."

The man some call "Joe Pa" was winning most of the time in those days. He was a giant of the coaching business, a man people came to when they wanted to find out the answers to what was good and what wasn’t so good about college football.

Now people wonder how long he’ll hang on and why he hangs on. Now reporters want someone else to ask the tough question. In the old days, there was no need for the tough question.

In a way, it was like people were waiting for the arrival of the guy invented football.

In walked Paterno.

It was as if Knute Rockne, Fielding Yost, Fritz Crisler or Woody Hayes had come through the doorway.

The reporters quit talking.

The Man was here.

Paterno was still in his game-day attire.

He wore a light blue dress shirt with a maroon-and-gray patterned necktie, a navy blue nylon jacket with a cotton lining, gray slacks and athletic shoes.

There were more than 20 tape recorders scattered around the large table. Guys with huge TV cameras stood in the back.

They were in the room to capture on videotape and audiotape the comments of a man who has won 338 games—one fewer than Bobby Bowden of Florida State. Bowden won No. 339 on the day Paterno’s Nittany Lions lost to Iowa.

The defeat at Kinnick Stadium was Paterno’s fourth in a row and his fourth straight to the Hawkeyes’ Kirk Ferentz.

Both Paterno and Ferentz had jogged quickly to midfield to shake hands afterward. It was a warm greeting. Ferentz knows the sort of misery Paterno, whose records are 2-6 overall and 0-4 in the Big Ten, is going through.

At the southeast corner of the stadium, a number of Penn State’s players walked slowly to the locker room. They had the blank stares on their faces that most other players have when they come off the field after a defeat at Kinnick Stadium.

Penn State’s cheerleaders were still there. So was a scattering of Nittany Lion fans. Few words of encouragement were uttered to the players as they approached the tunnel leading to the lockers.

Indeed, these are sad times for a collegiate football giant.

"Is it hard to build enthusiasm when you’re always coming from behind?" a guy asked Paterno.

"It ain’t easy," Paterno responded. "This will be a tough week. I’ll earn my pay this week."

Paterno said he "honestly felt coming out here that we had a really good shot to win" the game.

Now, he added, "I have to take a good look at the whole situation, and that’s got to start with the organization--how I’ve got people doing things, kids doing things.

"I’ve got to look at the thing, and I’m not even sure what to look at. I know I’m going to look in the mirror."

The 2-6 record means Penn State is having its worst start since the 1931 season. The Nittany Lions finished 2-8 last year.

"We’re competitive, but we’re not making plays," Paterno said. "It’s got to be my fault. It’s got to come back to me. I have to figure out why we’re not doing a couple of things a little better in the clutch."

More generic questions followed.

"OK," Paterno finally said, "I want to go home."

He got out of his chair, and walked out of the room with the pink walls.

No doubt for the last time.

Joe, it was great knowing you.