It’s a prized possession of new Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, a photo of himself with two of the winningest coaches in major-college football history, Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden.

“I am just great fans of those guys,” Meyer said yesterday. “I know there will never be another run, another commitment to a university like those two guys had. I just don’t ever see that happening again.”

Meyer is glad he got to know Paterno, the 85-year-old former Penn State coach who died yesterday in State College, Pa., because of complications from lung cancer.

Paterno might have become a tarnished icon in the eyes of many in the wake of a child sex-abuse scandal at Penn State, but it was his overall life’s work upon which Meyer dwelled. All 46 of Paterno’s years as a coach were at Penn State.

“The fact he’s been a head coach at the same school for so long, he never had a major violation, he never had an issue with sportsmanship, doing it the right way, I just think he was the ultimate football coach,” Meyer said. “He’s a guy who believed in education, who followed the rules and was loyal to his school. He was the epitome of what being a coach stands for.”

Meyer sat out the 2011 season following his departure from a six-year run at Florida. His last victory for the Gators was over Paterno-led Penn State in the Outback Bowl after the 2010 season, which turned out to be the last bowl for Paterno.

“And I was involved with Bobby Bowden’s second-to-last game (at Florida State in 2009). I got to coach against him for five years,” Meyer said of Bowden, who coached for 34 years at Florida State.

Perseverance led to Paterno’s longevity at Penn State.

“I just think it’s a different time now,” Meyer said. “There’s the expectations, the fact that people get tired of you, the media, the fans, even the coach himself — I just don’t ever see that happening again.”

Former Ohio State coach John Cooper wished his career had ended better for “my good friend Coach Paterno.”

“I’m one of those guys who wished he’d gotten out 10 years ago and enjoyed a little more of what life had to offer,” Cooper said. “But you know, he loved what he was doing.

“Like coach Bear Bryant, those legends, that’s their life. If you took football away from him you took his life away from him.”

Alabama’s Bryant, the winningest major-college coach at the time, died Jan. 26, 1983, of a heart attack four weeks after coaching his last game.

Cooper, who coached Ohio State from 1988 to 2000, never coached against Bryant in a game, but he did against Paterno.

“When were started playing them in the Big Ten (in 1993), he was already a legend,” said Cooper, who went 5-3 against Paterno while at OSU. “I know some people liked to call him JoePa or things like that, but not me. I always addressed him as Coach Paterno.

“I had the utmost respect for that man and what he meant to the game of college football. I didn’t play for him and I never coached for him, but he’s still Coach Paterno as far as I’m concerned.”

Penn State and Paterno, whose national titles came in 1982 and ’86, didn’t dominate the Big Ten like some had forecast after they entered in 1993. But as Cooper remembered, the Nittany Lions delivered a few licks, and Paterno never changed.

“He gave me one of the worst defeats of my life over there (63-14 in 1994) and we got even with him a little later, probably gave him some of his worst defeats over here (38-7 in ’96, 45-6 in 2000), but through it all, Joe was your friend,” Cooper said. “When you beat him, he came over and shook your hand in the middle of the field, he looked you in the eye and congratulated you. And he was that way whether you beat him or he beat you.

“We went on many trips with Joe and his wife, Sue, the Nike (sponsored) coaches trips in the summer, and he treated everybody, from first-year head coaches to the assistants to some of his longtime coaches, with the same utmost respect. You would have thought he had never won a game. He was one of the guys, but you knew he was more than that.”

Meyer made some of those trips, too, as he climbed the coaching ranks from Bowling Green in 2001 to Utah in 2003 to Florida in 2005, and he said yesterday he just wished he’d carried along a pen and paper.

“There’s been so many times during my career when I’ve thought about some of the discussions I’ve had with Coach Paterno,” Meyer said. “I would wear him out. We would go visit on those like Nike things and I wouldn’t leave his side. I’d try to sit down in certain areas near him, I’d try to sit next to him at dinner, I’d try to be around him as much as I could, because those were always opportunities to learn, and he taught me quite a bit.”

In the final analysis, what set Paterno apart?

“He did the things you had to do to win games,” Cooper said. “Usually his teams didn’t beat themselves. He was consistent about what they did — they played good, tough, hard-nosed, old-fashioned football. They were sound on defense, they ran the ball, they kept it away from you. … He won games by his teams doing the little things exceedingly well, just like all the greats did it.”

Meyer agreed.

“He was an old-fashioned guy that adapted,” Meyer said. “Some coaches didn’t survive because they didn’t adapt. He adapted to the times, he adapted to (the ever-changing rules and challenges of) recruiting. But at the end of the day, he was still Joe Paterno.”

Meyer said that was reinforced last spring when, working for ESPN after resigning from his six-year run at Florida, he visited the Penn State spring practices.

“I asked Mike Mauti, his linebacker, ‘When you think of Joe Paterno, what’s the one word you think of?’ ” Meyer recalled. “He said, ‘Consistency. It’s always honest, it’s always very forthright, and he’s also so very loyal.’

“That’s how he survived so long.”

tmay@dispatch.com