JoePa not going anywhere ... but Iraq?

Updated: November 5, 2003, 2:24 PM ET

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Associated Press

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- It will take more than a five-game losing streak to force Penn State football coach Joe Paterno to quit.

A call from the White House? Perhaps.

A week after a front-page headline in the Philadelphia Daily News declared, "Joe Must Go," Paterno dismissed such criticism and said he's not going anywhere -- unless, that is, President Bush needs him.

"There is always going to be some of that," Paterno said Tuesday. "If the White House called me and said they needed me to go over to Iraq, I might go over. I don't know. Whether you like it or not I am going to be around next year, so relax."

Critics have cited Penn State's current losing streak, a rash of player arrests and some well-publicized recruiting failures as reasons the 76-year-old Paterno should step down.

Penn State (2-7, 0-5 Big Ten) goes into Saturday's game at Northwestern with the worst Big Ten start since joining the league in 1993 and the first five-game losing streak in the Paterno era.

Paterno came to Penn State in 1950 as an assistant to Rip Engle, then took over as head coach in 1966. The Nittany Lions will end the year with a losing record for the third time in the last four seasons, and just the fourth losing season since Paterno's arrival.

His career record is 338-107-3. Earlier this year, Florida State coach Bobby Bowden passed Paterno as the coach with the most major-college wins, a record Paterno took two years ago from the late Paul "Bear" Bryant.