(U-WIRE) UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Forty years is a long time to be doing anything. Over that span of time, a lot can change. People enter your life, people leave it. You have kids, they grow up, they leave the house.

You recruit players, you coach them up, they listen, they graduate, they move on with their lives.

Perhaps no one knows more about change than Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. This fall, Paterno will enter his 40th season as the head coach of the Nittany Lions, a season he hopes will bring about much needed change on the football field.

About a half-hour before the annual Blue-White game Saturday, Paterno held a press conference to address the state of the Lions after spring practice.

He showed a different side of himself, a side that most media members aren’t accustomed to seeing during the regular season.

He joked. He laughed. He was serious. He went into detail with questions he’d generally side step during the season.

He was blunt.

“One of the things that has been the most satisfying in all my years of coaching is that with all the criticism over the past couple of years, [our] coaching staff stuck with us. A lot of them had a chance to leave and could have left, but they stayed,” Paterno said.

“That indicated to me that they felt this team had a chance to be a good football team and I think the team felt that, too.”

Paterno said that he hopes his team, particularly his defense, which was No. 1 in the Big Ten in points allowed last season, doesn’t buy into the hype about how great they could be.

“We need to be careful that we don’t overestimate them. Really, when you look at our record defensively, we did not play a lot of good offensive football teams [last year]. We’ll be more challenged this year in the early games,” Paterno said.

Over the weekend Penn State welcomed back its 1994 undefeated football team for a special ceremony at halftime. Paterno reflected back on how special that team was and the changes among players and media over the past 10 years.

“The ’94 team was a true championship football team anyway you look at it. To see them with their kids and wives, it makes you feel pretty good about what intercollegiate athletics are all about and, unfortunately, a lot of people in media don’t grasp that,” Paterno said.

“I understand the competition is so great in the media today. A story has to be a story anyway you create it.”

Ultimately his tone was optimistic heading into next year. But Paterno isn’t going to be content with just getting the Lions back to a bowl game. He feels this team can accomplish more.

“We’re not thinking about just being a competitive football team, we’re thinking about being where Penn State used to be. In order to do that, there’s a lot of things we gotta do better,” Paterno said.

Some of those things went into effect when Paterno all-but-named Michael Robinson his starting quarterback for next year.

On Saturday Robinson was almost flawless after practicing at just quarterback for an entire spring. He seems to have improved immensely, and Paterno hopes it will trickle down onto the rest of the Lions.

“I’ve got an old saying that I preach all the time: Either you get better or you get worse, there’s no way to stay the same,” he said.

-Sirage Yassin