College football all-time power rankings: The 30 best programs ever
By Dante Pryor
10. Penn State Nittany Lions
- All-Time Record: 900–402–42 (.685)
- All-Time Bowl Record: 30–18–2 (.620)
- National Championships: 2
- Conference Championships: 5
- Consensus All-Americans: 42
- Heisman Winners: 1
Few programs are synonymous with one coach and Penn State is one of those programs. Joe Paterno is Penn State Nittany Lions football. Consider this, Penn State has 900 wins; Paterno has 409 or 45 percent of those wins. Tracking Paterno’s time at Penn State, including his time as an assistant, Paterno spent 62 years in Happy Valley.
In Paterno’s 46 seasons as head coach, Penn State won two national championships and five undefeated seasons. The Nittany Lions finished in the top 10 a whopping 17 times under Paterno. After 104 seasons as an independent, Paterno led the Nittany Lions into conference play in 1993. The Nittany Lions won three conference titles under Paterno. Penn State’s home field, Beaver Stadium was expanded six times while “Joe Pa” was head coach. Its capacity of 106,572 makes it the fourth largest outdoor stadium in the world.
Before your next trip to Happy Valley, make sure you’ve got all the gear you need.
Paterno coached Penn State’s only Heisman Trophy winner, John Cappelletti, in 1973. Paterno finished his career with the most wins in FBS before his career came to a scandal-laden end as part of the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal.