HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's long service at the university theoretically puts him in line for a pension of more than $500,000 a year, according to an Associated Press analysis of state public pension records.

Paterno's pension records obtained Tuesday from the State Employees' Retirement System credit him with more than 60 years in the system. The formula used to determine benefits makes him eligible for a pension equal to 100 percent of the average of his three highest-salary years.

His pay rose from $541,000 to $568,000 over the past three full calendar years.

When Paterno retires, he will have to make a set of choices to determine his pension, including whether to designate a survivor to receive benefits after he dies and whether to obtain a one-time, lump-sum payment of his own contributions.

State Employees' Retirement System spokeswoman Pamela Hile said Internal Revenue Code and Retirement Code benefit limits may also apply, so the agency does not issue estimated pension benefits ahead of time. There also is a long-service supplement that could boost Paterno to 110 percent of his final average salary.

A 2006 report on Pennsylvania state pensions said the largest pension at that time within SERS was $254,000, being collected by a Penn State surgery professor who had withdrawn a $554,000 lump sum.

The New York Times also reported Tuesday night that Paterno transferred full ownership of his house to his wife, Sue, for $1 in July. The couple had previously held joint ownership of the house. Paterno's attorney Wick Sollers told the paper in an e-mail that the transfer had nothing to do with the scandal but was part of an ongoing "multiyear estate planning program."

In other developments Tuesday, ousted Penn State University president Graham

Spanier resigned from the board at U.S. Steel. And the Department of Defense accepted his resignation from

the board of advisers of the Naval Postgraduate School.

Spanier had been a member of the Pittsburgh-based steelmaker's

board of directors since 2008.

Paterno, 84, lost his job as head football coach last week after his onetime top assistant Jerry Sandusky was charged with sexually abusing boys, including some on campus, for more than 15 years.