The Lion in Autumn (15 page)

Somehow, the initial decision was reversed and Paterno sent the punt team out. Boston College got the ball back and held on until halftime.

“What does that say about the state of Penn State football,”
Boston Herald
columnist Michael Gee noted to colleagues in the press box, “when the coaches feel like they can't even make one yard when they have to?”

The indecision, the confusion, the wasted seconds, the lack of faith, all suggested a crisis in confidence along the Penn State sideline.

“I didn't want to punt it right away and give them a couple chances—you don't know what can happen. A punt can be blocked,” Paterno would explain after the game. “I did debate going for it but then I figured if we don't make it, in two plays it's a field goal and then we're three [scores] down. I knew we were getting the ball in the second half and I thought we could get a couple of scores.”

But if they were initially thinking about keeping the ball, why did they let the clock run down?

“If we were going to give it to them, I wanted to give it to them with as little time as I could,” Paterno said.

Then why the time-out?

“I wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page. To make sure that the kids knew not to get careless where it could be blocked or could be returned, because they're a good return team.”

Rather than scream at the ineffective offense, Paterno and Hall tried to stay positive at halftime.

“Coach Hall brings a little bit more laid-back attitude toward us,” said Robinson. “He told us that when things don't go our way, we can't panic.”

The relaxed approach appeared to work. Mills—wearing a T-shirt honoring the memory of high school teammate Billy Gaines, who had died in an alcohol-related fall the previous June—completed all five passes on Penn State's first second-half drive. The last was a 13-yard touchdown to fifth-year senior wideout Ryan Scott that cut BC's lead in half, 14–7.

It was the first career reception for Scott, a native of Renton, Washington, who lacked a wideout's speed. He had been one of those fifth-year seniors Paterno urged to leave after 2003. Instead, he pleaded for
a last chance, had a superb spring and Blue-White Game, and now was contributing.

“He said, ‘Coach, I think I'm better than you think I am,' ” Paterno recalled.

Scott's catch animated the Penn State sideline and all those Nittany Lions fans who, in the absence of a huge parking lot on BC's cramped campus, had spent the afternoon grilling on tiny patches of the college green.

But the joy didn't last long. Boston College responded with a 74-yard scoring drive on its first possession of the half, Peterson capping it with his third touchdown pass, a 2-yarder to tight end Mark Palmer. It was 21–7. And 14 points looked like an awfully large deficit for this Penn State offense.

Indeed, neither team would score again. Mills's interceptions would end three of the Lions' next four drives. That gave him a Penn State–record-tying four in the game—one fewer than he threw in all of ‘03. Overall, Penn State turned the ball over five times that night.

“He was under a lot of pressure,” Paterno said of his quarterback. “Really, they did a good job with that. They were putting a lot of pressure on him with only four guys coming. So you know it wasn't like he had some people that he could go to. . . . And obviously, when we were down and somebody had to make a play, he might have forced the ball a couple times, but that was just because he was trying to make a play.”

As Paterno had feared, Peterson's elusiveness was a sizable advantage. He ran seven times for 27 yards and completed twenty-three of thirty-one passes for 199 yards and three touchdowns. The injured Whitworth's backup, Andre Callender, finished with 114 yards on twenty-seven carries. For Penn State, meanwhile, Hunt collected 52 yards on fourteen carries as the Lions could manage only 73 yards on the ground. A wide-open Phillips had mishandled a pass at the BC 5, one of several more drops by wide receivers. And despite all the talk about increasing Robinson's workload, the junior was involved in only nine plays—four carries for 35 yards and five receptions for another 54. The final score was 21–7.

Asked if he were comfortable with his star playing such a limited
role, Paterno was vague. “They did a good job on some things. I think we'll make some adjustments. I wouldn't want to say we're going to do exactly what we've done, but I think we'll make some adjustments.”

Following the Lions' sixth consecutive road loss, Paterno looked old and tired as, just before midnight, he walked into the postgame news conference. One writer described his demeanor as a mix of “puzzlement, discouragement, and dejection.” Even the coach's surroundings here were funereal. In the Skating Lobby of Kelly Rink, which adjoined the stadium, black drapes had been fixed to the podium table and the wall behind for his news conference.

Paterno cradled his head in his right hand and answered questions in a tone dripping with disappointment.

“They just played better than we did,” he began. “They played hard. They played very well. Now I'll have to look at the tapes. We obviously didn't block them very well. They didn't do anything fancy. They beat us. . . . I tried to tell people, you know, we weren't home free because we beat Akron. That's not to take anything away from Akron. I think I said that to everybody else. But BC played very well. We did not play well. I thought we were ready to play well.

“We turned the ball over, what, four, five times? You can't win games with five turnovers. What'd we get? One? And they get five. You can't win. . . . I don't have all the answers right now. I've got to go home and look at tape and look at people, see if maybe we've got to change some people.”

At this point Paterno hid Austin Scott's punishment from the media, insisting that the tailback hadn't played because “right now [Hunt] is a little better.”

The coach was called immediately on what seemed to be a disingenuous response. Even if that were the case, why in the fourth quarter had he used senior Mike Gasparato, the No. 3 tailback on the depth chart, instead of Scott?

“Hunt took himself out and we were throwing the football, and Mike's a little better at pass protection [than Scott],” he said.

Though it was only one loss, Paterno's mood indicated that, in this feeble Lions effort, he may have been able to glimpse more.

IT FINALLY GOT TO PATERNO
at the end of the 1973 season. The pollsters might be willing to continue to overlook his team, but he would not.

So after Penn State beat LSU, 16–9, in the Orange Bowl, he had an annoucement for the reporters who gathered outside his locker room that night.

“This was the best team I've ever coached,” he told them. “We have as much right to claim the top place as anyone else. We're undefeated. . . . I have my own poll, the Paterno poll. I took the vote a few minutes ago and the vote was unanimous: Penn State is number one.”

Then, when he got home to State College, the coach ordered rings for his team. Before graduation that spring, he presented them to his players. It was a gesture that displayed the coach's generosity as well as his frustration.

“I still wear mine,” said Tom Shuman, that 1973 team's quarterback. “It doesn't say we were national champions but it's got my name on it, our record, a replica of the Orange Bowl trophy. It was a nice gesture, and to be honest with you, it was kind of fitting since all of us felt like we were as good as any team in the country that year.”

Paterno's 1973 Nittany Lions won all twelve of their games. They won them by an average of 26 points. They averaged 40 points in eleven regular-season victories and yielded under 11. They rushed for
a phenomenal 2,994 yards. They had the Heisman Trophy winner. They had ten players selected in the next NFL draft. They had seven defensive players who would be drafted.

And they finished fifth in the polls.

In that season's final Associated Press rankings, Penn State ended up behind, in order, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Alabama. Alabama, upset by Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl, topped United Press International's list, which was calculated before the bowl games and also had Penn State fifth.

His third perfect season had been accomplished with a conservative, straightforward style that would be linked to Paterno forever, even after his wide-open 1994 team averaged 47 points a game. The Nittany Lions ran the ball four times as often as they threw it—643 rushing attempts to 161 passes. Shuman was a competent replacement for John Hufnagel, but the rush-heavy offense would limit him to just 83 completions on the season.

“I was the question mark that season,” said Shuman.

Defensively, Penn State was loaded again with smart and aggressive players like Ed O'Neil, Mike Hartenstine, and Randy Crowder. The unit was so deep, in fact, that O'Neil's backup was Greg Buttle, a future all-American and NFL star.

By the end of that season, Paterno was wondering what he had to do to win a national title. His teams had won 62 of their last 68 games. They'd finished in the top ten of the Associated Press polls every year but one (1970, when the 7–3 Lions were 18th). They'd been perfect three times in six years, produced all-Americans and NFL all-stars. And yet there appeared to be a sizable portion of the college-football world that continued to classify Penn State football as inferior.

Part of it, of course, was a perception problem. For all its success, Penn State was still something of an interloper. Paterno and his program had not yet gained admission into the elite group of college-football powers that included Alabama, Ohio State, Texas, USC, Notre Dame, and Nebraska. Since 1960, those six schools had won every national title.

It was Paterno's misfortune that his unbeaten seasons had coincided with perfect years by three of them—Ohio State in 1968, Texas
in 1969, and Notre Dame in 1973. At that stage of their coach's career, the Nittany Lions weren't ever going to win a beauty contest with those schools.

“The sportswriters at the time, for whatever reason, just didn't want to give Penn State much credit,” said Shuman.

Then there was the issue of its schedule, dominated as it was by eastern competition. Except for Penn State, no eastern team had finished in the top ten since 1963. Army, Navy, Pitt, and Syracuse were in a downward spiral from their glory days. In 1973, the Lions played Stanford, Iowa, and North Carolina State, but also Maryland, Syracuse, West Virginia, Pitt, Ohio U, and all three service academies.

Most of the sportswriters and coaches who voted in the national polls rarely saw Penn State. They could judge them only by the level of their competition. And, in most of their minds, there was no way eastern schools and the service academies matched up with teams from the Big Ten, the Pac Ten, the Big Eight, or the Southeastern and Southwest Conferences.

“We all felt like we could've beaten Notre Dame that year,” said O'Neil, who, along with his teammates, had watched the Irish's victory in the Sugar Bowl, played on December 31 that year, the night before the Lions beat LSU in the Orange Bowl. “But we never got a chance. What could we do?”

What Penn State could do was upgrade the schedule. And as a result of his 1973 disappointment, Paterno decided to do just that. There would be home-and-home dates with Ohio State in 1975–76 and with Miami in 1976–77. Before the decade was over, Penn State would play SWC teams like Texas A & M, SMU, and TCU, and Big Eight foes like Nebraska and Missouri. And eastern football, thanks to Pitt's recruitment of Tony Dorsett, a player Paterno didn't land because he wouldn't guarantee him that he'd start as a freshman, soon took a big step forward.

As frustrating as 1973 was, the year did provide Penn State with an enormous amount of positive publicity—and victory in at least one national poll.

Tailback John Cappelletti became the school's first and only
Heisman Trophy winner. Even though voters in the Southwest had Cappelletti fifth on their collective ballots, his election proved Penn State could win a nationwide vote.

As impressive as Cappelletti's 1973 numbers were (1,522 yards, 17 touchdowns), it wasn't a banner year for Heisman candidates. His vote total was more than double that of runner-up John Hicks, an offensive lineman from Ohio State, and the third-place finisher, running back Roosevelt Leaks of Texas. Kansas QB David Jaynes was fourth. (The best-known name among the top ten that year was Ohio State's sophomore running back Archie Griffin, who would capture the Heisman the next two seasons.)

In the long run, though, what may have helped Penn State's program as much as the Heisman was Cappelletti's acceptance of it.

A tough but tender-hearted running back from suburban Philadelphia, he received the award on December 13, 1973, at a banquet in the New York Hilton. His touching speech not only moved the nation and precipitated both a book and a television movie, it also added to Paterno's growing mystique.

Cappelletti's speech made the front page of every sports section in America and was featured on the three networks' weekend newscasts. That was the nation's first up-close glimpse of a Penn State player, and it only confirmed the positive image of Paterno that had arisen two years earlier when he rejected the Patriots' lucrative offer.

The night of the award presentation, Paterno was sitting just to the right of Cappelletti when the tailback tearfully dedicated the trophy to his younger brother, Joey, who was dying from leukemia. Speaking from a text he had composed with his older brother, Marty, a Temple journalism graduate, and which had been reviewed by
Philadelphia Inquirer
columnist Bill Lyon, Cappelletti began his memorable talk by thanking his parents and his coach at Monsignor Bonner High School. Then he turned to Paterno, telling the large audience of his family's first encounter with the coach.

“When he came in the door, he looked over, and on the couch was my brother, Joseph, lying there,” said Cappelletti. “He was very ill at the time, more so than usual . . . and coach Paterno was more
concerned and talked more about what he could do for my brother than what he could do to get me at Penn State. . . .

“I think everyone here knows mostly about his coaching accomplishments at Penn State. His record is a great one, probably the greatest in the country. . . . [But] he's more concerned with young people after they get out of school than when they are in school—what he can do for them to make better lives for them. . . . I don't think there is a more dedicated man anywhere concerned with young people and a better teacher of life on and off the field.”

After mentioning his Penn State teammates and backfield coach Bob Phillips, Cappelletti commenced the paragraph that would cement his place in both Heisman lore and popular culture.

“The youngest member of my family, Joseph, is very ill,” he began, sobs halting his words, tears rolling from his eyes as he tried not to look at the table where his family, including Joey, sat. “He has leukemia. If I can dedicate this trophy to him tonight and give him a couple of days of happiness, this is worth everything. I think a lot of people think that I go through a lot on Saturdays and during the week as most athletes do, and you get your bumps and bruises and it is a terrific battle out there on the field. Only, for me, it is on Saturdays and it's only in the fall. For Joseph, it is all year round, and it is a battle that is unending with him, and he puts up with much more than I'll ever put up with, and I think that this trophy is more his than mine because he has been a great inspiration to me.”

The nation first had learned about eleven-year-old Joey Cappelletti and his illness a few months earlier. At that time, the Penn State tailback had promised his ailing brother four touchdowns in the game closest to his birthday, against West Virginia on October 27. He had scored three times before Paterno, always reluctant to pile it on an opponent, pulled his star in the second half of what would be a 62–14 rout. Teammates who knew of Cappelletti's pledge informed the coach. Paterno reinserted him. Cappelletti soon had his fourth touchdown and Joey his birthday gift.

When the Heisman winner's speech was complete, sobs were audible in the Hilton ballroom. Vice President Gerald Ford, who during
his stumbling talk had called the Heisman winner “Joe Cappelletti” and his coach “my good friend John Fraterno,” was crying. O'Neil, his hard-nosed teammate and closest friend, said he “couldn't find the strength in my legs to stand up” for the ovation that followed. Paterno, for one of the rare times in public, removed his glasses and dabbed at his eyes.

Finally, Bishop Fulton Sheen, the charismatic Catholic prelate whose TV show had been a nationwide phenomenon in the 1950s, rose to deliver a blessing.

“Maybe for the first time in your lives you have heard a speech from the heart and not from the lips,” he said. “Part of John's triumph was made by Joseph's sorrow. You don't need a blessing. God has already blessed you in John Cappelletti.”

Less than three years later, with his big brother at his bedside, Joey Cappelletti died.

Later on the night of the banquet, at a Penn State reception in a Hilton penthouse, Paterno and Patriots owner Billy Sullivan met again.

“Do you see now why I couldn't leave?” Paterno asked him.

“Yes,” said Sullivan, “I think I do.”

No one would have wanted it that way, of course, but when the book
Something for Joey
appeared and later was transformed into the highest-rated TV movie of 1977, Paterno's reputation expanded again.

Suddenly, this coach who already was reputed to be the embodiment of all that was good about college sports was a central figure in a story that ranked with
Brian's Song
and
Pride of the Yankees
among the most memorably inspirational sports films ever.

The Cappelletti episode became part of the growing Paterno mythology, along with his Grand Experiment, his principled stands against football corruption, his attachment to Penn State, and, of course, his simple values, perhaps best exemplified by the uniforms his players wore.

In fact, perhaps more than any single element of his career, it was Penn State's plain blue-and-white uniforms that came to define Paterno in the decades that would follow.

Oddly enough for a school that has become renowned for its ultraconservative attire, Penn State's original colors—as selected by a three-student panel in 1887—were pink and black. The first cheer for a Penn State football team went:

Yah! Yah! (Pause) Yah! Yah! Yah!

Wish. Wack. Pink. Black.

P-S-C.

But perspiration, repeated washings, and sun exposure quickly faded the pink to white. Soon blue and white replaced pink and black, and in 1890, the school's new colors were officially born.

Penn State's uniforms were colorless even before Paterno took over. Photos from the 1948 Cotton Bowl reveal that the Nittany Lions wore all-white in their 13–13 tie with Doak Walker's SMU Mustangs. There were brief glimpses of flair afterward—striped pants and socks were worn occasionally into the 1970s. And in at least one 1950s photo, Lenny Moore is wearing a white jersey with two blue stripes wrapping around the sleeves.

Paterno's belief in the power of a simple, unchanging trademark dated back to October of 1943, when his Brooklyn Prep coach, Earl “Zev” Graham, a former Fordham all-American, took him to Yankee Stadium for a World Series game between the Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. A Dodgers fan by birth and inclination, Paterno was nonetheless drawn to the image of professionalism projected by the Yankees, a tailored uniformity that included pressed pinstripes and polished shoes. The impression that winning and appearance were somehow linked was born that day.