Quick Hits on JoePa's Presser

With the latest shenannigans hitting the ticker, I'll keep this brief. But I still want to go over Joe Paterno's press conference from Tuesday afternoon. I thought it was really positive all around, even if it took place before the "5204" incident. At first, the presser started off with real, football-related questions. Talking about this week's game with Oregon State, the play of the defensive line, and some quick hits about the Coastal Carolina win. But at the end I felt the reporters got lazy and just repeated the same old bull about retirement and hypotheticals. And we all know how much JoePa hates hypotheticals.

I thought the exchanges about the linemen's weight, and Aaron Maybin were the most interesting.

"Q. The offensive line has been playing great the last year or so. It's also one of the smaller offensive lines in the country with average height and width. How hard do you guys have to work to keep the weight down on these guys? And how athletic do you think it makes them on the field?

Well, there's a natural body weight. We take their body fat all the time. You can be 275 pounds and have a body fat percentage of 28, 29 percent, and, you know, you're just carrying dead weight. That's not going to help you.

So the people in the training room, J.T. Thomas and Jeremy (Scott) and the doctors, they'll periodically just weigh them and test their body fat.

We have a certain percentage of body fat that we think is acceptable for different positions. If you're over 22 percent let's say and I'm throwing that figure out there without being sure I've got the figures correctly if you're over 22 percent, I don't care if you weigh 400 pounds, you've got to get down. You've got to get down where your body weight, the percentage of your body fat, would be under 22 percent.

If you're a wideout and you're over 8, 9, 10 percent body fat, you're too heavy. I mean weight is not the answer. It's strength and the power that you can generate, the shot, the quickness, all those kinds of things. And excess weight does not help you. It does not help you.

We have two really fine freshmen kids and one is about 32 percent body fat. Until he gets down, he's not going to play. But he's a heck of a prospect. The other one's about 29 percent, and he's in the same boat.

So we work hard to make sure they're at their optimum weight, whatever that is. It depends on their body structure and all the things that all of us would like. If we all had our body fat taken today, all right, where would we go? We're going to go to the Mayo Clinic."

About the defensive line:

"Q. You were talking the other day about your defensive line. I know Josh Gaines moved inside for a few plays. I wonder how much that gives you versatility, and how well Aaron Maybin played on Saturday?

He played all right. Maybin's got a long way to go. We've got better players than he playing right now. Maybin some day will be good. But Gaines and (Maurice) Evans, (Jerome) Hayes, I thought those kids played really well. And I think Maybin eventually will be a good football player.

But, he's got to be a little more disciplined. Not make as many mistakes and those kinds of things. But he hasn't played a lot. He's still young. I thought overall we did all right.

I think Coastal Carolina, when they decided to do a couple things inside, they did it well. The kids ran hard. A couple of those kids are quick. Obviously, they don't have the kind of depth and the size and maybe the power that a team like Oregon State has. But I think overall we did a decent job.

We've got to be better. Because, as I said, I don't think Oregon State's going to come up and throw the ball 50 times. I would be surprised. I think we've got to be ready to stop a couple running plays."

Ok, I know that was a pretty lazy overview on my part, but hey, you all probably read about it somewhere else already. I'll try to stay on top of the "5204" story, but for now, I'll just take care of football business.