The Lion in Autumn

by Frank Fitzpatrick

  It was for the most part a cultural wasteland, its appeal undetectable to those raised in the more cosmopolitan cities of the Northeast. Years later, when New York Herald-Tribune sports editor Stanley Woodward traveled to State College to interview his fellow New Yorker, he joked that to get there “you swung the final ninety miles through the trees.”

  Paterno spent his first night in a spare bedroom at the Engles’ home on Woodland Road, in the same College Heights neighborhood where he would one day raise his own family. The following morning he walked the few blocks to Beaver Field. The campus adjoining the stadium was growing rapidly. Penn State had twelve thousand full-and part-time students in 1950. Tuition was $200, something of a bargain since it cost $600 a year to educate one student at the school that same year. The gap was made up by the increasingly compliant legislature of a state then still rolling along on its coal and steel wealth.

  When he got to Beaver Field, he didn’t find anything to write home to Brooklyn about. The old facility wasn’t much more than grandstands, mostly metal but some wooden and rickety. It was surrounded by a few brick ticket booths. Players changed in an adjacent water tower. Penn State football had attracted an average of only 20,708 fans to its four home games in 1949 (a figure that would dip to 17,259 in the first season of Engle/Paterno.) The total contributions from alumni—to the entire university, not just athletics—amounted to less than $71,000.

  Paterno stayed with the Engles until, at the coach’s request, he moved into the dormitory where Penn State’s football players occupied two floors. He was supposed to be their monitor, but he so disliked the experience that when he became head coach he insisted football players live among the general student population.

  The following year, he moved in with Steve Suhey and his new wife, Ginger. That planted Paterno a little more firmly into the Penn State community. Suhey had been an all-American guard there before graduating in 1947. And Ginger was the daughter of Bob Higgins, the college’s football coach from 1930 through 1948. Several of their sons would later star for Paterno teams and one, Paul, would become a university trustee. And in 2005, Steve Suhey’s grandson, Kevin, would be a freshman on a Paterno team.

  “Through them I was fortunate enough to meet some younger people,” Paterno recalled. “We had fun. You found out you didn’t have to get a good plate of spaghetti. After a couple of beers, it all tastes the same. And I got to like the people. And I liked coaching.”

  Before the 1952 season, defensive line coach Jim O’Hora and his wife, Bets, moved into a new home, and partly to help defray expenses, they asked Paterno to live with them. He stayed with them even after the O’Horas moved to another house and wouldn’t depart their extra bedroom until 1961.

  As a single man, he was unusual among Engle’s assistants. A photo of Penn State’s 1953 staff shows Paterno, standing in the snow without his trademark glasses, as the only aide without a spouse. Marriage was of little importance to someone with his ambitions. Paterno and the rest of Engle’s staff enjoyed an unusual closeness. The married couples included Paterno in their off-the-field rituals, even before he was married.

  “Thursday nights we used to say, ‘The hay’s in the barn,’ and we’d go out and relax,” he said. “We worked hard but on Thursday nights we wanted to spend a little time with the family. So we would take the wives to one of the coaches’s houses and we’d have a couple drinks and then we’d go out and get something to eat. We’d go downtown to the Tavern or Duffy’s, different places.”

  Still, the native New Yorker’s frequently abrasive style annoyed some of the older, more low-key members of Engle’s staff. He had, in his late brother’s words, “a rage to win.” That trait, coupled with his natural drive and impatience, frequently made him an irritant.

  But those early colleagues also recognized Paterno’s coaching gifts—his ingenuity, detail-oriented mind, and an uncanny ability to convince people that his was the best way. Engle put him in charge of quarterbacks and gradually, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, began delegating more and more responsibility to his protégé.

  That didn’t leave Paterno much time for a social life, not that he could have conducted much of one from his quarters in the O’Horas’ bedroom. Finally, in 1961, O’Hora suggested it might be time for the then thirty-four-year-old coach to do something about that. He took Paterno aside and offered him some Irish advice.

  “You know, Joe, when my dad came over from Ireland, my cousins used to come over, and they needed a place to stay,” O’Hora said. “So my cousins would come over and they’d be here three or four months, and my dad would say, ‘Sean, you’ve been here three months, it’s about time you find yourself a lady and get on with your life.’ Joe, you’ve been with us [almost ten] years.”

  Paterno took the hint and rented an apartment a few blocks away from the O’Horas. Shortly afterward his relationship with Sue Pohland, a brainy student from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, blossomed. One of their first dates took place at a lecture by literary critic Leslie Fiedler. In May of 1962 they were married.

  “Sue’s a German girl but she turned out to be a good cook,” he said. “When Mom found out we were going to get married, she said, ‘A German girl? Where are you going to eat?’ ”

  By then Paterno had become enamored of Penn State and State College. And the feeling was mutual.

  “When I came here, I was a little bit of an egghead but I was accepted,” he said. “A guy by the name of Phil Young, who was one of the foremost Hemingway guys, he and I used to argue all the time about Hemingway. I never thought he was as good as Phil thought. And we used to go downtown and sit around and argue about things like that. We’d go to faculty clubs. I wasn’t looked down on as a dumb football coach. They were accessible. The town was small. You know the thing about this place is if I get on the phone with my staff and said we want to meet in fifteen minutes, everyone can be here. They don’t have to worry about the bridge going up. They don’t have to worry about the tunnel being crowded. I mean, it’s a great place to live.”

  He liked the players and the students too. In 1966, when the fires of social activism ignited many other campuses, student-government president Robert Katzenstein described the typical Penn State student as “passive, conscientious, law abiding, and [socially] ultraconservative.” Paterno had his own description. “They weren’t snooty like at Brown,” he said.

  Apparently forgetting his own initial misgivings, Paterno frequently scolded players who complained there was nothing to do in the remote mountain borough.

  “Nothing to do?” he would begin, making an argument that probably didn’t sway too many coal-region linebackers. “I suppose there was nothing for the Romantic poets to do in the Lake Country of England either?”

  Married and with a growing family, Paterno desperately craved a head-coaching job. He had turned down offers to become an NFL assistant, but in 1962 interviewed for the head position at Yale. Yale approached him again in 1964, by which time Paterno had become “assistant head coach” to Engle. This time the Ivy League school made him an offer.

  He decided to stay at Penn State because Engle, then sixty, informed him he’d be retiring soon, and university administrators assured him he’d be given every opportunity to succeed his longtime boss.

  After the Nittany Lions finished 5–5 in 1965, Engle stepped down and Paterno, offered $20,000 a year, took over at last.

  CHAPTER 3

  SPRING PRACTICE concluded with the 2004 Blue-White scrimmage on April 24, an azure-blue Saturday in State College.

  Perched in a booth high above the Beaver Stadium field, like some football god bemusedly observing his creation, Paterno was analyzing the scrimmage’s action for the university’s radio network. The headphones that comically engulfed much of his head were larger and provided more padding than some of the old leather helmets he had worn as a quarterback at Brooklyn Prep. Dressed in his standard game-day uniform of a blue blazer, blue oxford shirt, brightly colored tie, and khaki slacks, Pa
terno looked relaxed. After today’s game, his one period of relative calm was about to begin.

  Summer workouts wouldn’t start until August. He could squeeze in a few weeks with the family in Avalon. The only real demands the coach had this summer, beyond his usual fretting and obsessive preparations, were the frequent trips in a university jet to schmooze with donors, alums, and recruits and a few speaking appearances at football camps.

  While it remained large in the eyes of fans and the media, the dreadful 2003 season had receded farther and farther into Paterno’s seldom-used rearview mirror. A new cycle of football loomed, one filled, if not with spectacular promise, at least with a little of the old optimism.

  “We’re going to be OK. I don’t think we’re gonna be a great team,” he said in what was an almost annual refrain. “Not this year. Maybe in two years. But we’ll be OK.”

  Paterno had ascended to the stadium’s radio booth after the lengthy news conference that always preceded this annual scrimmage.

  “God almighty, all you guys here for a spring practice,” he said after taking his seat in a room packed with reporters. “I’m flabbergasted. I guess sometimes I forget how much interest there is in Penn State football.”

  It quickly became clear that football wasn’t the media’s primary interest on this day. The Penn State press corps’s relationship with the coach had changed, soured in fact, during the unprecedented spate of trouble in 2003. Now, the sportswriters wanted to know what steps Paterno would be taking in the future to prevent these off-the-field embarrassments from reoccurring.

  “Can’t we just talk about football?” he pleaded at one point.

  Occasionally Paterno the broadcaster was distracted, by a visitor to the booth, a sudden recollection, or the spectacular vista of the unspoiled Allegheny Mountains framing the horizon, their foothills dotted with silver-topped silos and picture-book barns.

  “What a beautiful day,” Paterno gushed in the midst of play-by-play man Steve Jones’s description of a pass attempt, sounding more like a first-time visitor to rural central Pennsylvania than someone who had spent fifty-four years here. “Look at the cows. And the farms.”

  Far removed from the disaster that was the previous season, he seemed to be enjoying himself. He told stories about his father and about Engle, the silver-haired mentor who had lured him to State College.

  But he had plenty to say about the game as well. Paterno called a player who fumbled a “knucklehead.” He booed the White squad’s decision to punt. He jokingly suggested a defensive back who had permitted a wide-open receiver to score “ought to be shot.” He seemed to know every player’s father or grandfather, not surprisingly, since many had been on his squads over the years. He mocked the job he had done in 2003. And when the stadium’s giant TV screen showed two of his former players in the crowd, NFLers Brandon Short and Brad Scioli, he good-naturedly chastised the latter.

  “Put your hat on straight, Scioli,” he yelled, as if the baseball cap-wearing Indianapolis Colts defensive end were standing for inspection in front of him. “You look like an Italian gangster.”

  For all the fun he was having, though, Paterno’s grasp of radio was nearly nonexistent. He hacked frequently into his mike, forgetting the “cough button” and drowning out Jones’s words. From time to time, focusing on the details of his players’ execution, he appeared to forget he was on the air. After a blown coverage or a missed block, you could hear him mumble, in that undiminished nasal twang, “Awwww, for cryin’ out loud, that’s just terrible.”

  Paterno’s listeners certainly didn’t mind. Alumni and those rural Pennsylvanians for whom big-time sports meant Penn State football relished this rare candid glimpse of a man who increasingly wrapped his program in secrecy. Those people hardly expected a coaching legend to suddenly reveal himself as an accomplished broadcaster. Many Penn State supporters, however, did expect that he continue to be a competent coach. And following the dismal seasons that had marked a strangely troubling new millennium at Penn State, some insisted he no longer was.

  Paterno was offering no indication that the 2004 season might be his last, even though his five-year contract was due to expire at season’s end. “I’m an idealist, I’m a romantic, and I’m a little bit of a cornball,” Paterno had said in March, “but I’m not naive—I understand human nature. There’s nothing that’s always exactly the way you want it. I’ve got to understand people are going to say, ‘Hey, you’re in it too long.’ ”

  Freshman players said he had assured them he would stay through their four years. He told reporters he still felt fresh and motivated.

  “I’ve got a lot of reasons to retire,” he said. “I have five children, (14) grandkids, and a young, active wife. It isn’t a question of ego or games won. I’ve always wanted to have an impact. I’m a teacher. You wake up every morning feeling good, looking forward to it. When I lose that, I’ll know.”

  As Paterno the radio analyst casually dissected the scrimmage, a nearby press-box television, tuned to that day’s NFL draft, unwittingly provided an ongoing commentary on the current state of his program.

  Seventeen years ago, Penn State had defeated Miami for the school’s last national championship. That 1987 Fiesta Bowl triumph over the trash-talking Hurricanes, whose success was clouded by talk of academic difficulties and legal problems, was, in retrospect, a last stand. Penn State’s pristine image, represented by its stark uniforms, its exemplary graduation rate, and its intensely moralistic coach, temporarily had stalled the arrival of what looked to some like a new, frightening sports order.

  Now, the face of one Miami star after another flashed on the press-box TV, smiling images that seemed to mock their school’s long-ago conquerors. In all, a record six Hurricanes were selected in 2004’s first round. Miami, despite—or perhaps because of—an outlaw image it had never shed, continued to hold a spot near the top of college football’s heap.

  Penn State, meanwhile, by almost any comparative standard, had slipped badly. The draft’s first round would be completed without a single Nittany Lion being picked. So would the second round. Midway through Round Six, on the following day, just one had been selected, cornerback Rich Gardner, a third-round choice of the Chicago Bears.

  There were many reasons. Paterno simply wasn’t recruiting as much talent these days. And the NFL-caliber players that did play at Penn State were often hidden from the scouts because of Paterno’s obsession with secrecy.

  A day earlier David Kimball, a little-known backup Penn State kicker in ‘03, had shocked NFL Combine observers with an awesome display. Quickly, he went from being a virtually unknown commodity to a seventh-round pick of the Indianapolis Colts. A league personnel director told The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that such surprises involving Nittany Lions were typical: “[Penn State is] the toughest place in the world to get information.”

  Scouts, who generally had unlimited access to other big-time programs, were hamstrung by Penn State. They could attend practice only one week during the fall and another in the spring.

  “I’ve talked with a lot of players around the league and they really believe Coach Paterno’s policies hurt them in the draft,” said ex–Penn State running back Eric McCoo, who has played with the Bears and the Eagles. “At most other places, there are a lot of times when scouts can watch you practice. And sometimes he can get in one of his bad moods and not let them in at all. That probably hurts recruiting. Players want to go where they have the best shot of being seen.”

  When the scrimmage ended, Paterno took the elevator down to field level. There, nearly lost amid the towering herd of exiting players, he roamed around near the tunnel for an instant, as if momentarily unsure of where he fit into this chaotic scene. Quickly, though, he regathered himself, sought out Hall and, with a look of pure relish, began discussing what he had seen.

  Another season, his 39th, now dominated his horizon, a view as appealing as the cows and barns he had glimpsed from the radio booth. Paterno had determined to
confront it with all the zeal and dedication he had managed to smuggle into his late seventies, all the single-mindedness that marked his previous thirty-eight.

  No beer is sold in Beaver Stadium. So for Penn State students among the crowd of forty thousand, the Blue-White Game was merely a brief interruption from a more entrenched weekend ritual—drinking.

  For some, it wasn’t even an interruption.

  “A lot of students went out to the parking areas around Beaver Stadium and just partied and never went into the game,” said Penn State police chief Tom Harmon. “I don’t know if [nice weather means] they drink more, or just spend more time outside, where they’re more likely to get caught. But it was a busy spring weekend, and the incidents were primarily alcohol related.”

  Paterno insists his players remain typical Penn State college students, and in this regard at least, they were. A year earlier, several, including wide receivers Tony Johnson and Maurice Humphrey, starting center E. Z. Smith, quarterback/wideout Michael Robinson, defensive linemen Matthew Rice and Ed Johnson, offensive lineman Tom McHugh, and punter Jeremy Kapinos, had gotten themselves into alcohol-related trouble. At Penn State, and virtually every other American college, alcohol has assumed a role of frightening significance.

  “For a lot of students, college is one big party with a $19,000- a-year cover charge,” said Murray Sperber, author of Beer and Circus: How Big-time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education.

  In State College, the partying on autumn weekends typically begins on Thursday night and continues unabated until the NFL games end on Sunday. In between, alcohol washes over the campus like a great tsunami of trouble.