Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football

by Bacon, John U.

  On the drive back to Penn State, Mike told his dad, “I can do this. I could be back in camp next year, by July. That’s doable. That’s salvageable.”

  They drove back in daylight, with their first good news in four days.

  When Mauti returned to the football building, he saw Jordan Hill working out, which inspired Mike to start working out himself.

  “I just started cranking out sets of pull-ups. Then I go to another machine and start doing curls. And I’m feeling good, and the next thing you know I’m on the trampoline strengthening my quad, to help me get ready for the surgery. It felt so good doing it.”

  As was so often the case when Mauti talked, his next sentence could have applied to him, as intended, or the Penn State program, which was never far from his thoughts:

  “Whoever’s trying to kill me isn’t getting the job done. But one day, I’m going to punch that fucker in the face.”

  • • •

  A few hours after Mauti returned from Pittsburgh, knowing his teammates were far more upset about his injury than they were pleased by the victory over Indiana, he gave them the good news at the team meeting. He told them not to worry about him, and to focus on Wisconsin.

  But he did not know that while he was riding to Pittsburgh, Zordich had made an unscheduled visit to O’Brien’s office, followed by Jordan Hill. Both had the same idea: they wanted to put Mauti’s number 42 on the left side of every player’s helmet. As usual, O’Brien was open to their idea and told Hill to get together with Zordich, then go see if Spider could do it.

  Spider called Penn State’s sign department to see if they could provide 120 number 42s by Friday, the latest they could put them all on the helmets. They called him Wednesday and said yes—but they only had a few extras, so if the equipment staff botched very many, it wouldn’t work.

  At about the same time, Gerald Hodges asked O’Brien if he could wear Mauti’s number 42 jersey that week. Knowing how close Mauti and Zordich were, O’Brien told Hodges to first ask Zordich if he wanted to wear it.

  “I couldn’t,” he told Hodges. “All yours.”

  When Hodges asked Mauti, “I just broke down,” Mauti recalled. “Hodges and I couldn’t be more different, but one thing we have in common is passion for what we’re doing: our mission, and our bond. That’s why he’s so special to me. He’s come such a long way.”

  Something else was in the works that week: the athletic department planned to surprise the seniors with a special honor, but would only tell O’Brien and Spider about it. The players—and the fans—would not find out until game time.

  • • •

  For college football’s first 130 years or so, almost every school’s season ended before Thanksgiving. This allowed players and students to go home to their families and gave a comforting rhythm to the season. When they returned, finals were in swing and basketball was starting up.

  But that started changing in 1992, when the NCAA permitted conferences to tack on a championship game, then approved an additional twelfth game for all schools in 2007.

  After top-ranked Ohio State got blown out by Florida in the 2006 BCS title game, 41–14, some believed it was because Ohio State had fifty-one days between the Michigan game and the bowl, compared to Florida’s thirty-seven—or two weeks less. The Big Ten decided to shrink the gap between the regular season and the bowl games by starting the season later and adding bye weeks.

  Put it all together, and now just about every FBS school finishes its regular season the Saturday after Thanksgiving—keeping players on campus while most of their classmates go home, and creating more empty seats for the biggest rivalry games of the season.

  That wasn’t the Nittany Lions’ concern on Thanksgiving, however—and O’Brien was working to make sure they stayed focus on their final mission.

  “Think about that locker room after a win,” he told them. “For some of you guys, I hate to burst your bubble, but this might be your last game.

  “I don’t think Wisconsin knows the type of beehive they’re walking into. They have no idea. I don’t know what they’re thinking, being the division champs in third place. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

  “What does make sense to me is you guys are a bunch of tough sons of bitches, some of the best guys I’ve ever met, who are going to get after them. You are going to finish the job and come into the locker room and celebrate like never before.”

  They got the message, loud and clear, and—as was usually the case—soon started sounding a lot like their head coach.

  “After the Nebraska loss,” offensive tackle Mike Farrell told me, “it felt so shitty. And we would hate to end the season with that feeling.”

  “This year, it all just can’t end with a loss,” Zordich said. “It just can’t.”

  • • •

  At Toftrees Resort Saturday morning, the team had to kill an hour or so before hopping on the blue buses. Because Penn State had a three-thirty kickoff, most of the players watched the noon football games in their rooms.

  After the University of Chicago dropped out of the Big Ten, Northwestern picked up a new rival in Illinois. In 1945, they started playing for the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk, a cigar-store Indian that was stolen and replaced by an actual tomahawk. In 2008, when the NCAA ordered members to eradicate all Native American names, logos, and the like—and received only partial compliance, witness the Illini—the two teams buried the hatchet and started playing for the Land of Lincoln Trophy, a bronze replica of Abe Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, designed by Dick Tracy cartoonist Dick Locher.

  Even during Northwestern’s Dark Ages, the rivalry with Illinois has been surprisingly close, with the Illini holding a 54-46-5 lead, going back to 1892. Since 1995, Northwestern had the upper hand, 10 to 7, going into the 2012 rematch. But they had lost Lincoln’s hat the last two years, so it was a relief for the Wildcats to put the 2-9 Illini away early, breezing to a 50–14 victory.

  The ’Cats finished the regular season 9-3, and 5-3 in the Big Ten. They weren’t sure which bowl they’d be going to, but they knew they’d be going somewhere warm. The bowl losing-streak monkey, on their backs since 1949, was on full alert.

  Michigan and Ohio State do not play for a tomahawk or a stovepipe hat or a turtle or a jug, for a simple reason: every year they expect to play for the Big Ten title.

  But as it was in so many other ways, the 2012 season was an exception. The Wolverines could have shared the division title with Nebraska if the Cornhuskers had lost that weekend, but they had already squeaked by Iowa, 13–7, the day after Thanksgiving. Likewise, Ohio State had already clinched its division, but couldn’t go any further, so this game was, truly, for bragging rights and little else.

  For both teams and their millions of followers, however, that’s always been more than enough, and they played like it.

  The Wolverines were out to prove that their 40–34 victory the year before, their first in eight years, was no fluke, and the rivalry was back. The Buckeyes, who entered the 2011 game with a freshman quarterback, an interim coach, and a 6-5 record, were out to prove that that loss really was a fluke, and that they were back. Further, they were just one win away from a perfect season—only the sixth in school history, a greater rarity than the Buckeyes’ seven national titles.

  Ohio State rode Braxton Miller’s 52-yard pass to Devin Smith to set up their first touchdown just 2:19 into the game. But Michigan came back with a 75-yard bomb to the irrepressible Roy Roundtree to tie the game, and the battle was on, with the old enemies trading the lead seven times before it was done.

  Thanks to his injured elbow, Robinson couldn’t pass, but he could run. With Michigan down 17–14 with 1:30 left in the half, the coaches put Robinson in at quarterback, on their own 25-yard line. He ran for 8, then broke another tackle when two Buckeyes hit him at the same time and left him standing, free to run 67 yards for the touchdown.

  The Buckeyes countered with a 52-yard field goal to end the half behind, 21–20. No matter who won, all
indications were that the rivalry had returned, in full force.

  Despite the score, Urban Meyer wasn’t worried. “Up to that point, we had been one of the top-two teams for red-zone production,” he told me. “But Braxton was not playing particularly well, and you have to give credit to Michigan’s defense.

  “The score was real close—you can’t get any closer than twenty-one to twenty—so the plan was simple: take care of the ball, and let’s finish.”

  After the first quarter, Ohio State honored its 2002 national-champion team on its tenth anniversary. Their coach, Jim Tressel, had cost the current undefeated team not just an invitation to the Big Ten championship and to a BCS bowl game, but a shot at a national title. None of that stopped the 2002 players from hoisting Tressel onto their shoulders and marching him around the Horseshoe, to the cheers of the 105,899.

  The Buckeyes do not run a renegade program, but they once again demonstrated they don’t seem to care if their actions make others think they do.

  • • •

  If Meyer was impressed with the Wolverines’ defenders after the first half, he hadn’t seen anything yet: they kept Miller and company out of the end zone the entire second half.

  But Michigan’s offense seemed to forget everything it had done so well in the first half. The Wolverines gained 219 yards in the first half, and just 60 in the second, never crossing the 50-yard line the entire half. Michigan’s defense allowed the Buckeyes just two field goals, but it was enough for the Buckeyes to seal a 26–21 victory, Ohio State’s sixth undefeated season, and Meyer’s first pair of little gold pants as Ohio State’s head coach.

  “That was a great win,” he told me, breaking into a rare, full-blown smile. “One of my top five.”

  But the best part, for the new Urban Meyer, was yet to come. As soon as the game ended, with the students rushing the field all around him and his son, he started asking, “Where’s my wife?” He asked someone to find her, and his daughters, who’d come back for Thanksgiving, and get them to the locker room.

  “I’ve never done that before, either,” Meyer said, “but I knew this was the only time I might have the chance.

  “So I had my wife, my two daughters, and my son in the locker room together, all arm in arm, singing that great fight song.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

  • • •

  In Big East action, Pitt led Rutgers 21–0 at halftime, in front of a half-empty Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, while Maryland had fallen behind North Carolina, en route to the Terrapins’ sixth straight loss, to close out a 4-8 season. The Big Ten fans who noticed were not impressed.

  • • •

  Back in State College, Penn State’s seniors boarded the blue buses for the last time.

  Although it was not a sellout—a crowd of 93,505 showed up (thank you, Thanksgiving)—the folks who stayed in town or traveled an average of four hours to get there made sure they were heard.

  The fans lined the buses’ route, while the seniors gazed out the school-bus windows, filing away the final images to pull up decades later. The usual suspects were there, flashing their signs—WE ARE ONE, PRIDE, and the fourteen people spelling out W-E A-R-E P-E-N-N S-T-A-T-E—but the first of the day’s surprises met the players at the tunnel. When they got off the buses, they saw the fans covering the grass embankments, waving blue signs that said LEGENDS, and white signs that said EVERY ONE OF YOU, and others holding up the individual faces of the seniors—all the seniors. The seniors noticed.

  Zordich made it a point to get off the bus with Mauti and walk into the locker room together. Zordich put his arm around his best friend and lifted his left hand to point to the players’ stalls.

  “Check this out.”

  There, Mauti saw the famed white helmets hanging from their hooks—every one of them featuring a dark-blue 42 on the side.

  Mauti shook his head, pushed Zordich away, bent over for a moment, then walked straight to the showers to lose it by himself. After he had composed himself, he returned to thank Zordich, Hill, and Spider, who’d worked with his staff sticking them on the night before.

  “You better like it, you sonovabitch,” Spider said, smiling. “I spent five hours on them!”

  After the routine warm-up on the field, the seniors returned to the field, one by one, when the announcer called out each name. They ran back out between two rows of lettermen, band members, and cheerleaders to meet their parents at midfield. The last four, in order, were Hill, Mauti, Zordich, and McGloin.

  The families had already gone through plenty of tissues when the announcer turned the crowd’s attention to the seats on the west side, under the press box. There, the crowd flipped up their cards, which tried to spell out ONE TEAM and THANK YOU SENIORS in the student section, but because the top layer was empty, due to Thanksgiving vacation, you could only make out TEAM and SENIORS.

  The announcer then asked the crowd to look toward the east skyboxes, where the years of the school’s undefeated, national, or Big Ten championship seasons lined the silver fascia. The list was long: 1894, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1920, 1921, 1947, 1948, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1982, 1986, 1994, 2005, and 2008.

  After the announcer finished, a gray plastic tarp hanging to the right of the last year, 2008, dropped, revealing the big blue numbers: 2012.

  Whatever tissues remained were quickly put into service.

  • • •

  After your players go through what amounted to a senior banquet attended by their families and 93,505 adoring fans, how do you get their heads screwed on straight to play the game?

  O’Brien did his best by keeping his final pregame speech short and intense, and conspicuously routine.

  “We’re going to go out there and give them sixty minutes of Penn State football! Now let’s go!”

  • • •

  But it quickly became clear that O’Brien’s best efforts could not be enough.

  Wisconsin’s Montee Ball, the Big Ten’s best runner in both 2011 and 2012, started the day by cutting through Penn State’s heralded defensive line for 7 and 9 yards. One play later, from Wisconsin’s 43, quarterback Curt Phillips hit Gordon Melvin for a first down, but Melvin didn’t stop there, running all the way to the end zone.

  Four plays, 74 yards, 1:53 into the game: 7–0, Wisconsin.

  Penn State responded with a now-trademark, 15-play drive. Nine of them were runs by Zach Zwinak, including the last 4 straight, to cover 41 yards, every one of them hard. The contrast between the slippery, fleet-footed Ball, who was happy to sneak out of bounds instead of being hit, and the blood-and-guts Zwinak, who plowed relentlessly forward like a linebacker-seeking missile, reflected the teams they led. But Zwinak’s method worked just as well, and tied the game at 7–7.

  The Badgers didn’t seem to mind too much, returning the following kickoff back to their own 47-yard line. From there, Jar Abbrederis ran through the Lions for 24 yards, then let Ball finish the job with three straight runs to get to the end zone, for a 14–7 lead.

  As General Patton would say, the Badgers were going through the Lions like crap through a goose.

  “First two drives?” Coach Johnson said afterward. “Scary. Scary. It happened so fast. I told them, ‘We’re fine. Just keep fighting.’ It was no time to panic. And I tell you, we went to work—and Jordan [Hill] had a defining moment. He was hurt, and he played.

  “I knew he knew he was about to pounce.”

  “I was still remembering what they did to us last year,” Hill told me, referring to the 45–7 beating the Lions suffered in Madison, to give them a disappointing 9-3 record. “This time we knew it was our last game—there would be no bowl game—and after everything that happened to Mauti, there was no way we were going to lose that game. No. Way. It just wasn’t how the storybook was supposed to end.”

  Hill told his fellow defenders, “The bullshit’s gotta stop. We’re not doing that. We came too far for us to be playing like that right now.”

  He sa
id later, “All we needed was one stop to get things rolling. And that’s what happened.”

  The rest of the half, Penn State’s offense managed to cross midfield just once, to Wisconsin’s 40, but it never gave Wisconsin a short field, while Penn State’s defense clamped down. The result: eight straight punts between the two teams.

  In the coaches’ room before the game, O’Brien had said, “What Wisconsin does on offense plays right into our hand. Right to Jordan Hill.” Hill seemed determined to prove his coach right.

  What started out looking like a disaster for the Lions had settled down to a straightforward, no-nonsense Big Ten battle—already one of the best of the season.

  • • •

  After the coaches met in their room at the half—“Thank God our D held us in,” O’Brien said—they fanned out to talk strategy with their position groups.

  O’Brien told the offense the coaches had a new strategy to attack Wisconsin more effectively in the second half.

  “We’re going to run more Z-formations, more wheel and sub routes,” he said. “Matt [McGloin], I’m not going to freeze you as much. Just run the plays. Let’s get into a rhythm and get going.

  “Let’s run and work those formations—and we got this.

  “No more penalties. Stay on track. We had a good drive there, and a penalty took us out.

  “Lot of football left. Lot of football left.”

  It was not hard to see that, in just twelve games, O’Brien’s command of his team had become even greater, and his sense of where they were and what they needed even more precise, his energy more finely focused.

  O’Brien turned the offense over to Mac McWhorter and the position coaches, but charged back a few minutes later to say, “Hey, offense! When I do this”—he punched his left palm—“that’s ‘whoop speed.’ That means you run, you sprint to the line, you spot the ball, and you go! Got it?!” They got it.

  Defensive coordinator Ted Roof closed his session with the defense—which, after Wisconsin’s first two drives, had been superb—by telling them, “Thirty more minutes. Don’t bring anything back.”