Joe Paterno may not know what Twitter is, but his assistant coaches and players do, and they are giving Penn State football fans more tidbits of information than ever before.
Tom Bradley tweets. So does Jay Paterno, Daryll Clark, A.J. Wallace, Brandon Ware and others. Some of their 140-character updates are informative, some are silly, some are useless.
Still, for diehard PSU fans who can't get enough factoids about their team, Twitter must be a godsend.
The Nittany Lions' first practice of the season Monday went well. Bradley said so. Or tweeted so.
"Practice was like most other first practices ... some good ... some bad. It sure was humid out there though."
The defensive coordinator also wrote, "It was a no pad practice today so mostly teaching was being done. The squad had a good tempo and assigments [sic] by the older players was sharp."
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Bradley also revealed the answer to a frequent question: "Everybody keeps asking me so here goes ... SEAN LEE IS READY TO GO!"
JayPa liked what he saw during practice Monday, writing, "Good start for the QBs & new WRs."
The quarterbacks coach also explained the logistics of preseason camp: "The players are in summer session this week so we work around their class schedules."
This isn't earth-shattering stuff, to say the least. But think about what's going on here.
Any fan in any location - be it sitting at your computer or on your mobile phone - can get frequent updates from coaches and players on the scene. Never before have fans had this kind of access to PSU football, which is notorious in media circles for its lack of player and coach availability.
The media is not allowed to watch practice or talk to players and coaches every day, yet the players and coaches are tweeting about what's going on in their lives.
Sure, a lot of the tweets are fluff, and it's doubtful Bradley, JayPa or anyone else would offer revealing details about anything newsworthy. For that stuff, fans (hopefully) will still need reporters to do their jobs.
The Twitter universe allows fans to follow as many media outlets and other fans as they wish. With so many newspapers and Web sites covering the Lions, not to mention bloggers and PSU students in the know, virtually anything that happens concerning the team will be updated within seconds.
It's amazing, really, if you think about Twitter from this perspective: Since Joe Paterno doesn't use a computer or cell phone, there almost certainly will be occasions when the rest of the world knows what's going on with the PSU football team before the head coach does.
Cory Giger can be reached at 949-7031 and cgsports12@aol.com.
