The Lion in Autumn

by Frank Fitzpatrick

  The university’s columned structures, its broad lawns, tree-lined paths, and small-town charm brought to mind all those impossibly earnest 1930s movies about college life that Paterno, who had grown up watching them, called “cornball stuff.” Even the campus buildings appeared to have been named by a sentimental but unimaginative screenwriter—Old Main, Rec Hall, Agricultural Hall. Outside one, a small brick building near the heart of the campus, a row of people waited in line. The Creamery’s 110 flavors of ice cream—including the perennially popular “Peachy Paterno” and “JoePa-stachio”—were made on the premises, in part from milk supplied by Penn State’s 175-cow dairy herd. On warm football weekends like this, the Creamery sold as many as eight thousand cones a day.

  The lovely campus evoked a welcoming atmosphere that had become one of Penn State’s most valuable assets. Paterno, in fact, was a partner in Pinnacle Development, a local company that capitalized on Happy Valley’s charm. Pinnacle had recently constructed the Village at Penn State, a $125-million, university-affiliated retirement community. Despite entrance fees that initially ran as high as $250,000, its communities, with syrupy names like Tradition Point and Homecoming Ridge, appealed to golden-aged graduates. Many of those dewy-eyed alums had been specifically targeted by Pinnacle, which had purchased the rights to Penn State’s name, logo, and alumni-marketing network.

  Paterno’s national profile had helped the university create a powerful marketing machine. That night’s pep rally, for all its seeming innocence, was in reality a vehicle to bolster Penn State football traditions in a troubled era. The new, fast-paced video that would be debuted at the rally (“One Hungry Pride”), the scores of fresh-faced cheerleaders, the corporate-sponsored calendars handed out to attendees, the Blue Band, even Paterno’s appearance, were all part of a massive sales pitch.

  A year earlier, school officials had hired Guido D’Elia, a Pittsburgh marketing executive, to find new ways to sell football, along with men’s and women’s basketball. The hiring hinted at what had become a major topic in athletic administration meetings: Now that Penn State could no longer guarantee an annual bowl appearance to its supporters, how did they sustain interest, attendance, and donations?

  D’Elia, with Paterno’s blessing, already had injected loud music, fast-paced videos, and a more aggressive, contemporary style into Penn State’s traditionally conservative approach. “He throws a lot of ideas out there,” said Curley, “and some of them stick.”

  D’Elia was a high-energy urban hipster set down in a football culture that didn’t welcome change. He wore shirtsleeves and jeans instead of blazers and khakis, sold with noisy videos instead of staid mailings, and tried to integrate a Luddite head coach into a wired era. The fact that the frenetic D’Elia did not fit the Penn State mold indicated just how desperate the situation was.

  When Paterno had talked about starting the season with a Friday-night pep rally, D’Elia jumped at the suggestion. That kind of emotion-charged, feel-good gimmick was more important than ever to maintain a positive and generous attitude among the university’s 440,000 living alumni, many of whom had made it clear that they wanted to see change.

  Sponsored by Sheetz, a Pennsylvania-based convenience-store chain, and promoted all week on Web sites, radio stations, and newspapers, “Penn State Football Eve” was a resounding success.

  School officials had expected eight to ten thousand fans. But by the time Paterno and his hundred-plus players arrived in two large buses, there were twice that number in the stands.

  Finally, after the video had been shown, the cheers shouted, and the players introduced, Paterno took the microphone from radio broadcaster Steve Jones’s hand and addressed the crowd with the fervor of a revivalist preacher. This would be his official 2004 debut. Feeling born again in his coaching life, he was going to proselytize.

  He began, as he often did, with a literary allusion, quoting from the title character’s speech before the Battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare’s Henry V. “If we are marked to die, we are enough / To do our country loss; and if to live, / The fewer men, the greater share of honor.”

  The quotation’s precise meaning in this context lost to perhaps all but himself, Paterno followed that by instantly transforming himself from intellectual to inciter. Gone was the caution that marked his tentative news conferences.

  “Where else would you get this kind of turnout for a team that was three and nine last season?” he screamed. “Nowhere! You are the greatest fans in college football. . . . Tomorrow, with over a hundred thousand people here, I want every single one of them helping this football team get back where we want Penn State football to be. We want to be right on our way to the Rose Bowl. We want to be on our way to another national championship!”

  Before the enthusiastic buzz he created had subsided, Penn State’s football team had marched out of the stadium and reboarded the buses. They would be making the short trip down Route 220 to the Toftrees Hotel and Resort, a golf-course inn where they spent the nights before home games. Although Paterno didn’t believe in athletic dorms because he felt players ought to be fully integrated into the university’s life, the Friday nights before football games were different. All the alcohol-fueled noise made dorm-room sleeping nearly impossible.

  “I’d much prefer to have them sleep in their own rooms, but how do you accomplish that?” he said. “On a college campus? It’s impossible. We play at twelve o’clock. We have three thousand students that don’t wake up until twelve-thirty. Maybe if we were drawing three hundred people or so you could. But how can they get a good night’s sleep when you have parties and unsupervised people coming in and out?”

  The coach was not on either bus. He preferred to sleep at home, which was only 1.4 miles from the stadium. So as the rally concluded with sparkling fireworks exploding loudly in the artificial-light-bleached sky, he walked through the parking lots and up onto Park Road.

  Then, flanked by the stillness of the dark university on one side and the soft glow of his College Heights neighorhood on the other, he headed toward home.

  By 8:30 A.M. Saturday, along busy College Avenue, Paterno was ubiquitous.

  The Student Book Store, the leading independent merchandiser of Penn State and Paterno paraphernalia, already was packed. Inside, life-size Paterno cutouts ($39.95) were being sold to fans dressed for a game that was still seven hours away. The coach’s familiar face—its long Roman nose, dark eyes squinting intently behind tinted glasses, pursed lips, all topped by that dark thicket of hair—could be seen on three-foot-tall JoePa bobble-heads ($349), on JoePa Christmas ornaments ($6.95), on JoePa masks ($6.95), and JoePa afghans ($59.95). Norm Brown, the shop’s manager, said business had been down the last few seasons, but that today, with a new season’s optimism so tangible, it was picking up again.

  In the lengthy breakfast line outside the nearby Corner Room restaurant, some fans had on T-shirts that expressed their devotion to Paterno. Others wore “True Blue” buttons.

  “True Blue” was, in part, a reaction to all the anti-Paterno talk of recent years. Founded during the off-season by a pair of Penn State students, Jon Apperson and Justin Casavant, its principle aim was to eliminate the negativity and apathy that were becoming so apparent at home games. That trend had begun with the odd sound of Beaver Stadium boos during the stunning 2000 loss to Toledo. The college community was as dismayed by the booing as by the loss. When more boos and more defeats followed, posters bearing the inscription WE BELIEVE, printed on a blue background, began appearing in doorways and windows all around town, hopeful stars in a darkening sky.

  “I figured it was OK to get upset, to second-guess Joe, but . . . we needed to do something to show our support,” said Rob Schmidt, the general manager of State College’s WBUS-FM, the radio station that distributed the signs. “The signs are our way of saying that we believe everything will be all right.”

  The new negativity was distressing for many in Happy Valley. The University Faculty Senate, at the urgin
g of Scott Kretchman, the school’s NCAA faculty athletic representative, responded with an antibooing resolution. It encouraged Beaver Stadium fans to “reduce or eliminate” boos and tasteless cheers like “Bullshit!” or “Ohio State sucks!”, to refrain from cheering when opposing players were hurt, and to applaud good play on both sides. When the ridiculously naive guidelines were read over the loudspeaker system at a game later that 2000 season, they were, not surprisingly, met by even louder boos.

  (Curiously, Penn State’s decline had helped with fan decorum elsewhere. At University of Pittsburgh home games, students had once delighted in chanting “Penn State Sucks! P-E-N-N-S-T Sucks!” even when their team wasn’t playing its longtime rival. Now the derisive cheer had virtually disappeared. “We said it because they [Penn State] were good,” Pitt student Tim Murphy told the Daily Collegian. “But now they do suck, so we don’t do it anymore.”)

  Still, it was true that during the Nittany Lions’ mediocre new millennium, the level of excitement at Beaver Stadium had been greatly reduced—despite crowds that rarely fell below a hundred thousand. The notable exception had been the near delirium that accompanied the Saturday Night Massacre of Nebraska on September 14, 2002—a 40–7 Penn State triumph that briefly revived the glory.

  “[We] were just kind of talking about the atmosphere, and how we might have the quietest hundred thousand fans in the nation,” said True Blue’s Apperson of his motivation. “If you had an atmosphere as close to [the Nebraska game] as possible for every game, it’s certainly gonna be a weapon.”

  True Blue wanted all fans, but in particular the twenty thousand or so students who attended each game, to adhere to three principles: “1. Wear Blue. 2. Be early and rowdy. 3. Stay to the end.”

  Now, in the hours before the Akron game, as spectators gathered along a stadium-entrance walkway to greet the Lions on their arrival, a True Blue member in white hard hat and a blue No. 11 Penn State jersey led them in raucous cheers.

  “Let’s Go, baby! Remember, We are . . . PENN STATE.”

  At just about that time, after having parked his car in the driveway of his mother’s Cape Cod house on nearby Park Road, athletic director Tim Curley was making the short walk to the stadium.

  He had grown up in this house, across the street from the old Beaver Field. He played football at Penn State in the 1970s, then began working as an administrative assistant to Paterno. By 1993, he had risen to AD. Now at fifty, he was a member of Paterno’s Palace Guard, those Penn State employees and trustees who owed their loyalty—not to mention their jobs—to the coach. One local sportswriter that summer expressed the widespread view about Curley and President Spanier when he wrote that they were “seemingly puppets sitting on Paterno’s knee—and there’s no question who pulls the strings.”

  Curley’s morning walk spoke volumes about the professional but unpretentious atmosphere Paterno had created. Though it was a sweltering September 4, the AD wore a tie and an oxford shirt. He exuded a buttoned-down contentment. And why not? He was working in his hometown. For his alma mater. He could park at his mom’s house. And why should he ride to the game in a limo or park in a reserved spot when he could walk?

  That was all so State College. So Penn State. So Paterno.

  Over his left arm, Curley carried what had become the most essential element of the Paterno-era Penn State uniform—a blue blazer. Like so many other traditions at the school, the fondness for blue blazers could be traced back to the coach. He was absolutely fanatical about players and athletic-department staff dressing professionally. His obsession, friends said, dated back to his early days as a Brown student.

  Ever since he had worn a sweater to a fraternity party and been humiliated, he rarely was caught underdressed. A blue blazer had been a staple of his tastefully conservative wardrobe. And though his recent game attire often included a blue windbreaker in its place, Paterno seldom went more than a day or two without donning one.

  The “Penn State Blazer” had become so embedded in the college’s culture that it frequently was awarded as a prize at university golf tournaments or fund-raising events. You could buy them in several College Avenue clothing stores. Jack Harper’s Young Men’s Shop offered a limited edition of a thousand “Penn State Navy Blazers” at $295 each. Distant alumni could custom-fit their own by purchasing a set of nine brass buttons, engraved with Penn State’s official seal. The buttons sold for $129.98 in the university’s bookstore.

  So it wasn’t at all surprising that when a police escort deposited the buses carrying the football team at its stadium entrance ninety minutes before the Akron game, Paterno emerged with a blue blazer slung over his left arm.

  His face betraying nothing, the coach, eyes down, walked by himself down the tunnel and into the locker room. The senior captains, quarterback Zack Mills and linebacker Derek Wake, came next, followed by the rest of the team.

  It was 2:05 P.M. The buses had arrived fifteen minutes behind schedule because Paterno and the coaches had kept the team longer at the Lasch Building. The revamped coaching staff wanted to make sure players understood what was at stake. The 2003 disaster was over, Paterno told them. It was time they all ran into that stadium and carried Penn State back to its rightful place in the football universe.

  “He reiterated a lot of positive aspects,” linebacker Paul Posluszny would say of his coach’s pregame talk. “He said we had put in all that work and that now was the time to reap those benefits. He reassured us that we could play this game. He said we are Penn State and only great football players come out of here.”

  Paterno and the players eventually drifted onto the field for warm-ups. The coach found his Akron counterpart, J. D. Brookhart, at the 32-yard line. Brookhart, in his first year at the Ohio school, had been Pitt’s offensive coordinator for the past seven seasons and the two men had met often in the past.

  As his team lined up to stretch and loosen up, Paterno walked among the rows of young men, patting their padded shoulders, or pulling them closer to him for a private word of pregame encouragement.

  Paterno then shook referee John Carson’s hand and thrust an arm around the official’s shoulder in a gesture of reconciliation. Paterno had made national headlines two years earlier when, after a 42–35 loss to Iowa, he chased Big Ten referee Dick Honig into a Beaver Stadium tunnel, grabbed him by the shirt, and complained about two controversial calls. The old coach had criticized the officiating frequently the last few seasons, and increasingly carped at officials from the sideline. In doing so, he had earned himself the belated reputation of a referee baiter.

  At the opposite end of the field, Akron players were also going through warm-up routines, occasionally glancing up at the huge crowd that was building around them. Soon, both teams retreated to their locker rooms for final instructions.

  Penn State players were buoyed by a season-opening optimism. They were ready to win this game and begin to make up for the indignities of last year. Just before 3:30, Paterno called them together for a few final instructions and the Lord’s Prayer. This was the best part of the week for him.

  “To gather a team around you just before a big game,” Paterno once wrote, “to look at grown men huddling close to each other with tears in their eyes, each one taking the hand of another on each side until everybody and every soul in that room is connected, each pledging to give and to expect the best, each becoming part of all the others—to look into those strong faces that say, If we can only do it today—to be there is to see and touch and be touched by people who have joined a cause that they have made bigger then themselves. If they can do it here, they will be able to do it anywhere.”

  Then he led them to the mouth of the tunnel that opened onto the southern end of the stadium. He stood motionless as the emotionally charged players hopped in place behind him, slapping each other on their shoulder pads, their collective shouts joining into an eerie, anticipatory chant.

  Just as they appeared to be approaching a frenzy, Paterno raised his right arm
and began to jog toward the field. The signal released the blue-shirted swarm behind him and soon the coach was overtaken by charging Nittany Lions. The delighted fans, having waited more than nine months for this sight, arose with a thick, throaty roar.

  Paterno felt exactly as he had at the start of his fifty-four other Penn State seasons. Excited. Upbeat. A little nervous. There was just one difference. He had never wanted to win any more than he did right now. Not so much to quiet the critics, but for his own peace of mind. For Penn State. And especially for the kids.

  The few seniors who joined him on the field today hadn’t enjoyed the same Happy Valley experience as their predecessors. There’d been too much losing. Too much turmoil. Paterno felt guilty about that.

  Now, he and his players believed, things were about to change.

  “We now have the confidence that we can win big-time football games,” Posluszny would say. “We’re going to be a team that contends for the Big Ten title.”

  Paterno knew this was going to be a competitive year in the Big Ten.

  Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa. The Nittany Lions would play all but Michigan this year and any of them could be the team to beat. But like his squad, all of them were flawed—though certainly to a lesser degree. There wasn’t a super team. In fact, the Big Ten was probably only the fourth best conference in the nation this year—after the SEC, Big Twelve, and Pac Ten. So who was to say Penn State couldn’t make some noise?

  Akron was from the tough little Mid-American Conference. MAC schools, eager for the media exposure and the approximately $425,000 a trip to State College earned them, had recently become annual early-season fodder for Penn State. The pressure for victories in State College was eliminating big-time interconference matchups. Since the addition of the Nittany Lions in 1993, each Big Ten team played eight of the ten others. In the remaining three or four games, Paterno didn’t need severe nonconference tests at home. So former opening-game opponents like Texas, Southern Cal, and Georgia Tech had been replaced by Toledo, Central Florida, Temple, and Akron. The Beaver Stadium crowds would be enormous regardless of the opponent, so why take a chance on losing? This would be Penn State’s twenty-first game against a MAC team. The Lions had won nineteen.