The then-Wisconsin coach could rest his rehabilitating right knee in the booth where he had watched his team win seven straight games, a Big Ten title and a Rose Bowl berth.

Or he could return to his customary spot on the sidelines for the season finale in Pasadena - this time with a cane and a severe limp.

Alvarez chose the cane.

The Badgers won, but it tells you something about a coach's desire to be with his ground forces even if he has to look like a crippled person in doing so.

Joe Paterno, with injured and aging legs, has faced the same dilemma and is currently caught in a sideline-or-box predicament.

Three games ago, the Penn State coach moved upstairs in the second half of the Temple game. Last Saturday against Purdue, he coached from the box for the entire game. This Saturday's test in Wisconsin, he said, will be a game-time decision, although the 81-year-old Paterno could be forced to coaches'-box purgatory for the rest of the season.

"I don't think it's a big concern for the squad and it's not a big concern for me," Paterno said yesterday during his weekly teleconference. "I'm going to have to live with it for a couple weeks, maybe more than that."

The 61-year-old Alvarez retired from coaching three years ago, partly because of his knees. Before his first surgery, he had several other problems: arthritis, torn ligaments, bone spurs and cysts. After retirement, he had his left knee partially replaced.

When No. 6-ranked Penn State travels to Madison, Paterno will be returning to the scene of his first major leg injury. Two years ago, he had his left leg broken and ligaments torn in his knee during a sideline collision.

"I was afraid for Joe," said Alvarez, then and still Wisconsin's Director of Athletics. "I know how much you have to be on your feet to coach football. That's a lot of wear and tear and he's been doing it for a lot of years."

After missing a game and coaching the final two games of the season from the box, Paterno returned to the sidelines last season apparently no worse for wear. But he damaged his right leg just before this season as he was fooling around attempting an onside kick. He now says he has arthritis.

Could it be enough to drive the seemingly ageless, legendary coach to retirement?

"It depends on how you coach," said Alvarez, good friends with Paterno. "I know Joe is an active coach. . . . He's always been a guy that's around the field, roaming in between players. And that's the way I was."

Paterno said the state of his health hasn't made him rethink his desire to coach beyond this season - the last on his contract - or for perhaps as many as "three, four, five" more seasons, as he has been wont to say.

"It really hasn't," he said yesterday.

Paterno's injuries gave him a glimpse of a few of the joys he would lose if he left coaching.

"I miss running out on the field," he said. "That would be dishonest if I told you I didn't love to get out there. The crowd fired me up and the whole bit."

There are advantages to coaching upstairs, as both Paterno and Alvarez pointed out. Paterno, who has never worn a headset on the sidelines, can now communicate with each one of his assistants.

"If you want to talk to someone, you have no problem getting to them," Alvarez said. "And you have a better vantage point. You see the entire picture."

You don't, however, get "to read the kid's faces, the looks in their eye," Alvarez noted.

Coaches also don't get a feel for players' mood and have less immediate impact on their psyches.

The players say that's one of the disadvantages of not having Paterno around, aside from the familiar sight of his rolled up khakis and black cleats patrolling the sidelines.

"You miss seeing him run around on the sideline and sometimes coming up to you, telling you what you need to do," quarterback Daryll Clark said. "It was slightly weird [Saturday] to look down and not see him pacing up and down the field."

Maybe he'll be back, but this time with the aid of a cane.

Injury update. Wide receiver Jordan Norwood, who missed the last two games with a hamstring pull, probably will play Saturday. Paterno said that tight ends Andrew Quarless and Mickey Shuler, both with sprained ankles, are questionable.