The Lion in Autumn

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The Lion in Autumn Page 32

by Frank Fitzpatrick


  “I asked E. Z. [Smith] how Anthony was in the huddle, and he said he was a little slow getting things out and getting things processed,” Mills said after the game. “But that’s to be expected with him. That is the first time he’s been in there in a tight situation in the middle of the game.”

  In the third quarter, Mills led the Lions on an eleven-play, 81-yard scoring drive. Penn State led, 14–13. Indiana regained the edge, 16–14, on a Bryan Robertson field goal early in the fourth. But Hunt scored on a two-yard run with five minutes left in the game to put Penn State ahead again. A two-point conversion pass was missed and the Lions’ lead was 22–16.

  Then came a series that both Paterno and his son predicted could one day be viewed as the moment when Penn State football was reborn.

  A 29-yard Matt LoVecchio pass to Travis Haney moved the ball to Penn State’s 42. After three running plays, the Hoosiers faced a second- and-9 at the Lions’ 30. LoVecchio threw a sideline pass to Chris Taylor that cornerback Anwar Phillips read perfectly. The Penn State defender stepped inside the receiver and the pass hit him in the chest—and bounced to the grass.

  “Here we go again,” said Paterno as he threw up his hands in disgust. “Holy God.”

  His lack of faith was reaffirmed on the following play when LoVecchio and Haney successfully hooked up. Phillips, “using both hands and every breath,” managed to run down the receiver at Penn State’s 1. With two minutes to play, Indiana had a first-and-goal.

  Along the sideline, a fellow coach asked Bradley if he thought they ought to go to Paterno and ask him if wanted the defense to allow Indiana to score quickly, saving more time for a possible comeback drive. Bradley declined.

  “You know what,” he said, “if I don’t believe in them, then they’re not going to believe in themselves.”

  As the Penn State defenders waited at the line of scrimmage, they could hear Indiana players buzzing excitedly in the huddle. “If you’re a football player, you live for goal-line stands,” said Connor.

  Tailback Taylor tried the middle of the line on first down but was stopped by lineman Ed Johnson for no gain. Indiana tried the same play on second down and this time Posluszny, who led the Lions with thirteen tackles that day, stopped him for a yard loss.

  Now, after a Penn State time-out, Indiana took the snap, LoVecchio rolled right on an option. Had he pitched it to Taylor, the tailback likely would have scored, but the quarterback held on and Wake and Lowry stopped him near the 1. That set up fourth-and-goal.

  Penn State called another time-out and as defenders huddled up deep in its end zone, Hali thumped his chest and yelled to his teammates, “It’s in here! It’s in here!”

  Bradley wasn’t sure which defense to call. “I’ve got four [defenses] ready to go and I’m thinking of all four calls. They came in with what we called the Hoosier formation, a stacked-I [three running backs]. So we were in a pretty good defense for the last play.”

  The Lions substituted linebacker Shaw for cornerback Phillips and lined up. Taylor got the ball again and again tested the middle of the defense. Posluszny and Connor met him high and Chisley got him low before he could reach the end zone.

  “At that point,” said Connor, “it’s kind of like two rams smashing into each other. At that point, it’s all about heart.”

  The defense and the sideline erupted as if Penn State had just won another national title.

  “It makes me feel good that, being two and seven, they still believe in themselves down there on that goal line,” Bradley said. “That tells me we’ve sold the kids on what we can become.”

  Those defenders were operating under some pressure too. They realized that, with fifty-five seconds left, their offense wasn’t likely to march the ball downfield for a go-ahead score.

  “We weren’t looking forward to the offense coming back on the field,” said Hali in a blunt assessment. “This was the last play to us. If we stop it we win. If we don’t stop it, we don’t have hope anymore.”

  While the sense of relief was palpable in the stadium storage area that served as Penn State’s postgame media room, there also was a feeling that a victory over the hapless Hoosiers was hardly a cause for celebration.

  Paterno smiled and looked relaxed, though reporters had to strain to hear him. “Geez,” he responded when asked to speak up a little. “We won a football game. What do you want me to do, jump up and down?”

  Robinson, who caught six passes for a career-best 99 yards, said, “Indiana’s a great team but we expect to beat Indiana. Nobody came to Penn State to be in the position we’re in.”

  Mills, who completed eleven of eighteen passes for 169 yards, spoke words that sounded odd coming from the QB of a 3–7 team. “It’s great,” he said. “But who’d we beat? Indiana isn’t a Big Ten powerhouse.”

  Paterno even lifted his ban on freshmen talking to the press. Connor, developing into a star, and Rubin were given permission to enter the interview area.

  “I was shocked,” Connor said later. “I was nervous. I was asking guys what to do.”

  As far as Penn State’s future went, perhaps the day’s most significant statistic was the fourteen carries and 74 yards that Austin Scott had accumulated. That seemed to suggest that the talented sophomore running back was out of Paterno’s doghouse at last. After sitting out the Boston College game, he had not carried the ball more than six times in any game.

  “I would like to talk [to Paterno] to see where I’m at, see what I need to do, see what they want of me,” Scott said. “It’s kind of hard when you don’t know what someone expects of you or what someone wants of you.”

  Paterno, not for the first time, acknowledged to the media that he needed to devise some sort of exit strategy. He just didn’t say when.

  “I think eventually I have to put a plan together so they know what I’m thinking,” Paterno said. “I don’t know when that time is going to come. I’ve been so busy trying to get us where we can win a game.”

  CHAPTER 20

  LARRY JOHNSON SAT AT HIS DESK in the Lasch Building on Tuesday night, midway between the Indiana and Michigan State games, and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Penn State’s defensive line coach was composing handwritten letters to a recruit. He would write fifteen of them that night. All to the same youngster.

  A personal note was the hottest trend in recruiting. “Kids don’t even look at printed material,” said Fran Ganter. “They just get too much of it. And the coaches counsel these kids, ‘Go where they want you the most.’ ”

  On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, when practices and meetings were over, Paterno’s assistants cranked out these notes. They wrote them on official Penn State football stationery or on postcards that displayed a packed Beaver Stadium on an autumn Saturday. Typically, they were just exclamation-point-filled reminders to let the high school player know he hadn’t been forgotten:

  Dear Bronco: Hope you’re doing great and that you’re still thinking about coming to Penn State! Coach Paterno and I are really excited about that prospect! Why don’t you plan a visit here? We’d love to see you and your family! Remember, WE ARE . . . PENN STATE!

  Ganter, now a first-year football administrator after decades as a Paterno assistant, said that as glad as he was to be free of eight-hour staff meetings, he missed the note writing even less.

  Paterno pitched in, too, composing notes and long letters to the top recruits. A letter he sent Derrick Williams, the speedy Maryland wideout/running back who was rated by many experts as the nation’s top 2004 recruit, was three pages long, and filled with underlined phrases and emotional entreaties.

  Bradley, by his own estimate, had written thirty such notes in recent weeks to Justin King, the hotly recruited cornerback from Monroeville, a small town near Pittsburgh. Less than a week earlier, King, whose stepfather, Terry Smith, had once been recruited by Bradley and played for Paterno, phoned the defensive coordinator.

  “Coach,” King said, “I just called to tell you I’ve decided to go to Mich
igan.”

  Bradley was silent.

  “Just kidding,” King said. “I’m coming to Penn State.”

  Paterno strongly hinted to the press and his players that Williams might soon be following.

  “We might have a great [recruiting] year this year, because we have had some people commit that a lot of you don’t know much about, and some who have committed that have not announced,” the coach said. “I think we are on our way to building a very solid squad down the road.”

  King’s signing, the prospect that Williams might come, too, and the inspirational victory at Indiana served as a finger in the dike. The spate of late-season good news didn’t stop the rumors about Paterno’s future, but it certainly slowed the criticism.

  An online petition started by Doug Skeggs, a ‘99 graduate, after the Iowa loss and meant to be sent to Curley and Spanier had garnered nearly four hundred signatures in the first three days. “The program is almost a laughingstock,” Skeggs would say. “I just think it’s time [for Joe] to go. It’s true. And it’s sad.” A day before the Indiana victory, the petition’s signature total had hit 570. After the Nittany Lions’ victory, it was virtually ignored. By January, there would be only 587 signatures, some of them clearly bogus.

  Paterno and his staff couldn’t help but feel that a corner had been turned, that a team unsure of itself at last had discovered some confidence.

  “It’s like we tell recruits,” sophomore linebacker Paul Posluszny said that week. “ ‘Don’t be discouraged about the record. That’s about to change.’ ”

  Jay Paterno predicted that people would one day look back on the goal-line stand in Bloomington as four of the most important plays in Penn State history. The win at Indiana had given the head coach the kind of I-told-you-so moment that Republicans were feeling that week in the afterglow of President Bush’s reelection.

  “I know everybody has a better way to do it than I have,” Paterno told reporters. “I know you guys have your own ax to grind and I understand that. But you are never going to change me or the way we run this program. . . . I think [a recognition of that kind of steadfastness] happened in the election. A lot of people just think that families and certain values are important. I am not saying that is right or wrong. But I know where I’m coming from and when we talk to kids, they know where I’m coming from. That I have not changed. When I am here in the year 2015, I will be telling you the same story. . . .

  “If I came over here with all of the letters I’ve got in the last six weeks, I would have a stack that high from fans and everybody else saying, ‘Stay with it,’ and the whole bit. It’s very important to me. Nobody likes to sit alone and have to make decisions that everybody interprets. Every decision I make is interpreted. That’s fine. But when you make those decisions and you try to eliminate all of the outside pressures and then when people respond and say, ‘Hey, Coach, we’re with you,’ that makes you feel good.”

  Some superstitious Penn State fans contend the team’s troubles began when Beaver Stadium was renovated prior to the 2001 season, blocking off the view of Mount Nittany. But the view of Mount Nittany didn’t just vanish. It was sold.

  The 11,500-seat addition that enclosed Beaver Stadium’s south end zone and cut off the fans’ view of the picturesque mountain included a multilevel Mount Nittany Club. The club’s spacious fourth-level concession area is enclosed by glass. High-end ticket-holders, paying a premium for the privilege, can sit there at tables with their hot dogs and sodas and gaze south at Mount Nittany, much as their less fortunate brethren used to be able to do from seats inside the stadium.

  There, late on the Wednesday morning following the Indiana game, the tenth and final 2004 luncheon of the State College Quarterback Club took place. Hundreds of men and women roamed the spacious club carrying black plastic plates teeming with sandwiches and potato salad. And even though it was a school day, there were a few youngsters present. Membership is open to all. For a $50 annual fee, plus a $12 charge for each luncheon, Nittany Lions fans got a buffet, a brief talk from Paterno and one or two players, and the opportunity to ask questions. Though the sessions typically were off the record and closed to the media, Paterno had granted a reprieve that week to a few writers from large, out-of-town papers, including USA Today’s Malcolm Moran, who was writing a profile of the coach that would appear later that week.

  Quarterback Club members typically fell into one or more of three categories: Penn State fanatics from central Pennsylvania, local businesspersons, or alums. Many, like President Jim Meister, were all three. The organization, which also conducted a postseason awards banquet, dated back to the 1930s, when the luncheons were held in a basement room at Old Main.

  These were the most loyal of Penn State supporters, the ones who reupped for season tickets year after year, the ones who steered their children and grandchildren to school here, the ones who continued to support Joe Paterno and his football team no matter what. They certainly were not the ones who had booed Zack Mills much of the season. And as it turned out that day, Mills, about to play his final game, addressed them.

  When Steve Jones introduced the quarterback, the club members stood and applauded heartily for more than a minute. Mills, who had missed the week’s first two practices to attend his grandmother’s funeral in Maryland, was clearly moved. He spoke briefly about his Penn State career and then solicited questions.

  An elderly woman wanted to know what he had learned from Paterno. He reeled off a list of qualities and admitted that while he understood ninety-five percent of what the coach had tried to convey in his five years at Penn State, it would probably take him another five years to dissect the rest.

  That was followed by an awkward moment, one that seemed to jar this audience’s conception of what went on between Paterno and his players. Asked if he could cite his funniest moment with Paterno, Mills couldn’t think of one.

  Mills’s reaction reflected Paterno’s demanding, hands-on style of coaching. It simply didn’t lend itself to warm and fuzzy relationships. Few players, as 1980s receiver Gregg Garrity once pointed out, liked Paterno when they played for him. But, as Mills suggested, there weren’t many who didn’t love and respect him after they graduated.

  “He’s a lot like your parents,” said Charlie Pittman, who had been a star Nittany Lions halfback in the 1960s. “It’s sometimes difficult to appreciate them until you’ve grown and become a parent yourself.”

  When it was his turn to address the luncheon, Paterno looked as relaxed as you’d expect someone to be when speaking to a roomful of familiar faces. Some of the attendees today had been coming to these affairs for as long as the coach had been in State College.

  His performance was more aging Catskills comic than coaching legend. Wearing an old blue suit, Paterno had one hand stuck in a pocket and the other wrapped around a cordless microphone. He paced across the stage on those remarkably skinny legs that didn’t seem capable of supporting a man of his energy and casually tossed off observations, jokes, and promises in a way that amused and delighted the captive crowd.

  He touched on some by-now familiar themes—complaining about the Big Ten officiating, praising his successful recruiting, noting how Maurice Humphrey’s expulsion had been a disaster, and predicting great things from his team in the next year or two. “We’ve got ten, eleven [freshmen] who aren’t playing who are as good or better than anybody we’ve ever had up here,” he said, a remark that did not elicit any follow-up questions as to why all that talent wasn’t being employed in this 3–7 season.

  There were some surprises, too, as when, just a few weeks after saying Michael Robinson might be his most talented quarterback, he mentioned that Robinson was no longer practicing at the position. No one asked about that either.

  Moments later, after his talk, Paterno was asked if he could recall a most humorous moment with Mills. He stalled as well. “Zack is a very phlegmatic person,” he finally said. Then he quoted from Hamlet again, this time referencing Polonius’s �
�To thine own self be true” speech.

  Inevitably, somebody did ask Paterno about his future. “Ahhh, I get asked all the time. ‘Why keep coaching? Why keep coaching? Why keep coaching?’ ” he responded. “Somebody asked me that Saturday and we just won a football game. Like I told him, ‘What the hell am I gonna do? Cut the grass?’ ” The coach then produced an enormous laugh when, after pretending to put on an imaginary set of headphones, he imitated an old man cutting grass. Then, as if hitting a switch to let the audience know the melancholy portion of the luncheon was about to begin, he turned introspective.

  “I’m alive,” he said. “I don’t want to die. Football keeps me alive.”

  He talked about how much he loved this team and how badly he felt for Mills and the other seniors who were going to be leaving Penn State, having experienced so much unanticipated failure.

  Earlier in the week, he had elaborated even more on the subject to reporters, suggesting that, unlike those classmates who had left the program for one reason or another, these departing seniors at least had given Penn State the full measure of their loyalty. Fourteen of them would be bowing out against Michigan State, including Mills, Wake, Guman, Jefferson, Davis, Gerald Smith, Ryan Scott, and Gould.

  “I’m going to miss some of them,” he told the press. “I’m disappointed that some of them haven’t had the kind of careers that they would like to have had. We’re going to try the best we can to send them out of here on Saturday with a win so there is a good taste in their mouth as they leave Penn State. They’re a good bunch of kids. . . . I don’t think much about the guys that left. They are not believers. The guys that stay is where your obligation is. You try like a dog to make sure they get what they should get out of the program.”

 

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