The next play was the pass to McCloskey.
Standing at the 50-yard line, Paterno waited intently for the ruling. “I couldn’t see anything from where I was,” he said. “But I knew he was close to being out of bounds.”
As the official ran toward the spot where McCloskey had crossed the sideline, he balled his hands into fists, folded his arms close to his body, and thrust his elbows downward to signify a legal catch. With nine seconds remaining, Penn State had a first down at the two.
Nebraska players pleaded with the officials, insisting a mistake had been made. Across the field, Cornhuskers assistants, though not Osborne, screamed their displeasure.
Recalling his Sugar Bowl frustration in 1979, Paterno now called for another pass play. Blackledge took the snap, looked left, and then swiveled his head back to the right. Backup tight end Kirk Bowman, a former guard who had earned his nickname of “Stonehands,” was open—so open that he was flailing his arms, desperately hoping to catch the quarterback’s eyes. Finally, Blackledge saw him. And though his throw was low, Bowman bent down to catch it for the go-ahead score.
“The thing I remember most,” said Paterno, “was Kirk Bowman making the catch in the end zone, because I think that was maybe the first or second catch he had ever made in his life at Penn State as a tight end. It wasn’t an easy catch either. Todd Blackledge didn’t put that ball on the money.”
Penn State students, most of whom were occupying the grandstand areas surrounding the end zone where the Lions scored, literally jumped for joy. Replays of the moment on CBS show the entire crowd hopping up and down in delirious unison. As the game ended, fans stormed the field and, with a frightening intensity, ripped down the goalpost closest to where McCloskey had made his catch. Later, only slightly less frantic, they paraded it past the Nittany Lion statue and Old Main.
Players from Nebraska, which would go on to finish at 12–1 and No. 3 in the country, remain convinced that one call cost them another national title. McCloskey, they still insist, was out of bounds. From some angles, slow-motion replays confirm their belief.
Penn State’s players are split. “You look at the film,” McCloskey said, “and you make up your own mind. . . . I was dragging my foot along the ground. It’s difficult to tell.”
But Paterno admitted in his 1989 autobiography that after seeing the televised replays, he was convinced that, “without question,” McCloskey was out of bounds.
Shortly afterward, Nebraska students took to wearing T-shirts that portrayed Beaver Stadium’s field as a familiar, rectangular grid—except for the slight bump protruding from the 2-yard line.
Paterno got another coaching lesson from Bear Bryant the next week, in the 42–21 loss at Alabama. Afterward, he challenged his team.
“You’ve got six games left,” he told them in the locker room, “let’s see what you’re made of.”
Penn State responded as he had hoped, rolling over the next four opponents—Syracuse, West Virginia, Boston College, and North Carolina State—by a combined score of 158–24. On November 13, when they traveled to No. 13 Notre Dame, the Nittany Lions were No. 5 in the nation.
The trip to Notre Dame was yet another illustration of Penn State’s scheduling revolution. A year earlier, the Nittany Lions’ schedule—with Nebraska, Miami, Alabama, Notre Dame, and Pitt—had been rated the nation’s toughest. This year’s included all of those teams but Miami.
The game against the Irish would be the second in a twelve-game contract the two independent powerhouses had signed in the late 1970s. It would be Paterno’s first trip to the place Knute Rockne transformed into a college football’s golden-domed Camelot. Growing up Catholic in Brooklyn, he was well aware of Notre Dame’s mystique and the school’s potent hold on generations of fans who had never even visited South Bend. Since coming to Penn State, he had lost a lot of recruits because of it. But as much as he admired the school’s proud football heritage and its commitment to academic excellence, he occasionally was irritated by the arrogance he believed surrounded the Irish program.
He experienced it quickly that weekend. Reporters who met Penn State’s plane at the South Bend Regional Airport on Friday night asked the coach how it felt to be making a first visit to such hallowed ground, as if the Nittany Lions were football bumpkins making their debut in the big-time spotlight.
“We’d played a lot of big games in a lot of big places by then,” Paterno would recall, “and I’m thinking, Who do these people think they are?”
During their hotel meeting that night, the coach couldn’t bite his tongue any longer. He delivered one of his rare fire-and-brimstone talks, reminding his players that Penn State possessed a mystique of its own.
“You’re going to hear all about Notre Dame tradition,” he told them, “and you know what? It doesn’t mean a thing unless Knute Rockne leaps out of the ground and tackles you. . . . When you put those black shoes on tomorrow, and you put on that jersey without your name on the back, and you put that plain helmet on, that’s tradition. Penn State tradition!”
The next afternoon, Penn State came from behind to defeat Notre Dame, 24–14. And in the season finale two weeks later, against Dan Marino’s fifth-ranked Pitt, the Nittany Lions held on for a 19–10 victory.
They were 10–1, ranked second, and headed for a Sugar Bowl matchup with Heisman winner Herschel Walker and No. 1 Georgia, which had beaten Georgia Tech, 38–18, in its final game. Since Penn State already had beaten No. 3 Nebraska, and since No. 4 SMU had a tie and, much like Penn State in the past, difficulty in gaining respect from poll voters because of a weak schedule, the Sugar Bowl would provide a clear-cut showdown for the national championship—only the sixth time since the Associated Press poll began in 1936 that No. 1 and No. 2 would meet in the postseason.
A year earlier, in a New Year’s Day Fiesta Bowl victory over Southern Cal, Penn State had controlled that year’s Heisman Trophy–winning tailback. Marcus Allen could manage only 85 yards on thirty carries in the Lions’ 26–10 triumph.
For that game, Paterno and Sandusky had devised something they called a “Magic Defense,” for its now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t qualities. Fronts switched from five, to six, to seven, even to eight men. Sometimes there were two down linemen, sometimes five or six. Linebackers came from everywhere.
The constant movement and change was an effort to confuse blockers, or at least to keep them guessing. More recently, the “Magic” had mesmerized Nebraska’s Mike Rozier, holding him to 86 yards—52 below his average—in that November victory. But Walker, sprinter-quick at six-foot-two and 230 pounds, presented an even sterner challenge.
“You hit him low,” said Sandusky, “and he moves his feet. You hit him high and he’ll knock you over with a forearm. It takes more than one man to get him.”
The practices between the November 26 finale with Pitt and the New Year’s Day game in New Orleans’s Superdome were brutally wearying. After years of complaining about polls, Paterno had failed in his first attempt to win a national title on that same Superdome turf four years earlier. Now he was determined not to let this opportunity at redemption slip away.
He assigned freshmen Eufard Cooper and Steve Smith to take on the role of Walker in the workouts. Smith, in particular, provided an excellent imitation of the Georgia star. But soon he was so beat up that he begged for a stand-in.
“Poor Steve Smith,” recalled linebacker Scott Radecic. “We nailed him and nailed him until he said, ‘I’m tired of being Herschel Walker,’ and wanted to quit.”
Paterno threw himself into the preparations as never before. Players said they had never seen their coach so determined. By game day, he was stressed, anxious, and edgy. A friend who had been granted locker-room access before the game asked the coach how he expected Georgia’s Vince Dooley to utilize Walker early in the Sugar Bowl.
“If we knew that,” snapped Paterno, “we wouldn’t be sitting here fidgeting.”
If Paterno was nervous, it wasn’t contagious. His play
ers came out poised and ready. With Blackledge hitting McCloskey and Garrity for long gains on the initial drive, the offense marched quickly down the field. Warner scurried the final two yards into the end zone.
The “Magic” was baffling Walker. Late in the first half, Penn State held a 20–3 advantage. But Georgia rebounded quickly. A Bulldogs touchdown with five seconds remaining in the half and another on the third quarter’s opening drive made it a 20–17 game.
Georgia had the momentum on its side as the fourth quarter began. Warner, who would outgain Walker, collecting 117 yards and two touchdowns to 103 yards and one score for the Heisman winner, was bothered by leg cramps, and Penn State’s offense had been unimpressive in the second half. Looking to shake things up, Paterno sent in a play, “643,” on a first-and-10 at Georgia’s 47.
Blackledge faked a handoff to Warner, who darted toward the center of Georgia’s defense. That feint froze the linebackers and at least one of the safeties. Meanwhile, on the flanks, four Penn State receivers, covered by only three defensive backs, sprinted downfield. Garrity broke clear down the left sideline and Blackledge heaved the ball toward him.
But the quarterback was anxious and his pass soared farther than intended. Garrity accelerated—as best he could anyway—lunged for it, and caught the ball as, still off his feet and fully extended, he sailed into the end zone. A photo of the moment, some say the most memorable in Paterno’s long career, would appear on the cover of the next Sports Illustrated.
Penn State’s 27–17 lead wouldn’t last long, though. Kevin Baugh, who had broken two spectacular punt returns earlier, fumbled one midway through the final quarter and Georgia turned it into a score that, after the Bulldogs failed on a two-point try, made it a 27–23 game.
Then came one of the most important decisions Paterno would ever make. On a third-and-3 at Penn State’s 32, with ninety-seven seconds remaining, his conservative instincts, as well as his assistant coaches, were urging him to call for a safe running play. Even if it failed, they could punt the ball deep into Georgia territory.
But the Bulldogs’ offense was in a rhythm now and he did not want to give them another chance. From where he stood pondering the decision on the Superdome sideline, he could see the end zone where Alabama had stifled his dream and his power-running game exactly four years earlier.
Blackledge wanted to throw it, pleading with his coach that he could complete a short pass. He figured Georgia, as it had done on second down, would be defending against the run. He told Paterno that if that were the case, he’d check off and throw it to Garrity.
“My gut believed him. . . . I was not the same person I was [in 1979],” Paterno later wrote in his autobiography. “[In 1979] I wasn’t big enough, strong enough, grown enough to face the ridicule if we had thrown the ball and the pass had been intercepted. The scare of it faced me down, and I lost. This time I didn’t care about the ridicule. I cared about the first down, the risk. . . . I knew this time that I was not afraid to lose.”
He told Blackledge to throw it.
The six-yard quick-out to Garrity was completed.
Penn State ran the ball three more times, eating up the seconds, before, with only six left, Ralph Giacomarro had to punt it away. When the Georgia return man was tackled, the clock ran out.
It was all a blur after that.
Paterno had just realized the compelling ambition of his professional life, winning a national championship, and yet somehow the moment was shrouded in an otherworldy haze. Part of that was because his glasses had been knocked off when celebrating players hoisted him onto their shoulders. Someone must have retrieved them because a photo of that victory ride shows Paterno wearing the tinted trifocals.
The picture also showed that when the moment he had worked a lifetime to achieve arrived, Paterno was in shirtsleeves, his collar unbuttoned, his tie loosened. The returned glasses, sensitive to light, were nearly completely opaque, obscuring whatever his eyes might have revealed. He was being jostled atop the moving pack of players like a tenderfoot on a mechanical bull. A wide smile was emerging on the coach’s face even though he appeared to be doing his best to prevent it. And above his head, smoky Superdome lights shone like jewels in a crown.
That night Penn State hosted a party at the team hotel and Paterno stayed until 2:00 A.M. Then he excused himself and went to bed, where he would remain awake most of the night savoring the victory and all that had preceded it.
The next day, thousands of fans and state politicians in central Pennsylvania greeted the Nittany Lions at Harrisburg Airport. Paterno and the players then attended a rally at the university’s Harrisburg campus before boarding buses for the long ride to State College. All along Route 322, people from the small towns that abutted the two-lane road lined up to share in this moment with the national champions.
“Through county after county,” Paterno would write of the scene, “for country mile after country mile, U.S. Highway 322 was lined with people, people, people, cars, cars, cars, honking horns, horns, horns, no end of them, waiting through that winter night just to wave, to shout a greeting, to clap their hands for an all-too-brief moment as their champions passed by.”
The crowds were even thicker in State College, where the buses unloaded their passengers at a packed and frantic campus rally. The following day, in the snow, there was a parade through town and another gathering on the broad lawn in front of Old Main. Paterno spoke at every stop.
He was enjoying the moment. No one had worked harder or, as Sports Illustrated noted that week, “was more deserving” of a national title. But he was also looking ahead, calculating what he and Penn State would need to win another championship in a changing collegiate sports world.
“Where would he go from here?” brother George later wrote. “For the Don Quixote of football, the impossible dream came true. What quest was he planning for the future?”
The answer came quickly. As coach of the national champions, Paterno had a bully pulpit. He planned to use it to transform the entire university. And the weapon he knew would be necessary in changing the school’s academic culture and maintaining its football dynasty was money.
In a speech to Penn State’s trustees just a few weeks after the Sugar Bowl triumph, he pointed out what the administrators were then only just beginning to understand: The national title provided the school with an unprecedented opportunity. Sports had grown so powerful, and garnered so much media attention and recognition, that they could be used to drive a school’s growth. Penn State was suddenly on the radar of students, professors, and administrators from across the nation. It was up to the university to create the kind of environment that would lure them to State College.
Paterno lambasted the staid intellectual life at Penn State, labeling it “reactionary.” He urged that professors with new and controversial ideas be imported. He wanted to see a better library, better classroom technology, a more challenging curriculum, and more scholarship money. As Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly noted of Paterno’s speech, “It may go down as the only time in history that a coach yearned for a school its football team could be proud of.”
Though Paterno clearly was speaking from a sense of idealism, there was a practical side to his message too. The better the academics and the facilities became, he knew, the easier it would be for him to sell Penn State to recruits and big-money contributors.
Penn State desperately needed to build its endowment. In 1978, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education study, its endowment of $11.3 million ranked 103rd among U.S. universities. A changing economy that stagnated Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania had led Harrisburg to slow the growth of its subsidies to the school. Athletics was soon going to feel the pinch unless it could begin collecting more cash from a suddenly energized alumni base.
The converted trustees immediately announced a $200 million fund raising drive with Paterno as its vice chairman. The coach and his wife began making generous contributions themselves. Those donations continued to
grow until, in 1998, the Paternos would donate $3.5 million to endow faculty positions and scholarships and to help with two building projects, including a library addition that now bears their name. By 2000, Philanthropy magazine estimated the Paternos had donated well over $4 million to the university.
“I’m a little bit like Andrew Carnegie,” Paterno said. “If you die with money, your life was a failure. . . . I really, honestly believe that we have an obligation to help people who haven’t been as fortunate as we have been.”
The football coach also became a formidable and enthusiastic fund-raiser for the university, flying all over the country in Penn State’s jets to clinch the deal with a big donor or to solicit contributions at a banquet.
Spanier recalled a joint visit they had made to a major contributor. The president was going to detail the project for which they sought the funds and Paterno was going to close the deal, asking for a $3 million gift. When his turn came, the persuasive coach asked instead for $5 million. And got it.
“My heart skipped a beat,” Spanier said.
What awed alum, after all, could turn down a personal request from the coach of a national championship football team?
“He understands the power of his presence,” said AD Tim Curley. “And he’s always been willing to use it for the good of the university as a whole.”
It worked. Penn State and its football team soon became as well known for the loyalty of its alumni, the high graduation rate among athletes, and an overall emphasis on education as for its victories.
According to the most recent NCAA Graduation Rates Report, eighty-eight percent of the Penn State football players who enrolled in 1995–96 graduated. The Division I-A average was a mere fifty-two percent. And among African-Americans, Penn State football’s graduation rate of eighty-two percent was nearly double the forty-two percent national average.
The Lion in Autumn Page 19