The Lion in Autumn (17 page)

O'Leary had replaced interim coach Alan Gooch, who had filled in after Kruczek was fired early in the Knights' disappointing 3–9 ‘03 season. Kruczek's final year in Orlando had been marred by eight player suspensions—including cornerback Omar Laurence, who was accused of possessing not one but two guns on campus. At that season's end, sixteen of the team's sixty-two players were on academic suspension. The school's graduation rate for athletes, according to AD Steve Orsini, was just thirty-three percent.

UCF took more criticism when it hired O'Leary. His base salary of
$700,000 was nearly four times more than Kruczek had earned. And he had been forced to resign at Notre Dame when, just days after accepting the pretigious job in 2001, it was revealed that he had lied about academic credentials on a résumé.

“Nobody is perfect,” Paterno said of O'Leary. “George made a mistake on a résumé. I would hope that we don't excommunicate him. The days of the Inquisition, I was hoping, were over.”

On the field, things weren't going much better. UCF had been moving in reverse ever since it went 9–2 in 1998 behind future NFL all-Pro quarterback Daunte Culpepper. The Golden Knights went 16–19 in the three succeeding seasons and had opened the 2004 season with two lopsided losses against nationally ranked opponents—34–6 at Wisconsin and 45–20 to West Virginia at home.

This was the kind of game Paterno always hated to play. A victory, even one as decisive as the win over Akron, wouldn't signify much of anything. A loss would be disastrous.

If the latter happened, he knew that his team—with games against Wisconsin, Minnesota, Purdue, and Iowa in the next four weeks—could be so devastated that it might not win again this season.

Central Florida was going to want to run the ball, especially if, as Paterno expected, the Beaver Stadium turf was wet and slippery. O'Leary hadn't yet decided from among three first-year quarterbacks. The Knights' offense, such as it was, consisted largely of senior tailback Alex Haynes, who had run for 193 yards in the two losses.

Still, Central Florida was quick and dangerous. An early score or two might inflame Penn State's self-doubt. In the Nittany Lions' 2002 home opener, UCF had nearly ruined the one good season Penn State had experienced in the previous four, just missing a noteworthy upset before succumbing, 27–24.

“I think Central Florida has played a couple of tough opponents,” said Paterno. “Wisconsin is really a good football team. I don't know what people are ranking them. I know West Virginia is ranked right up there and West Virginia has some awfully good skill people and very, very clever people. Central Florida can do a lot of things. They have
a couple of wideouts that played against us that hurt us. They have a running back who is a really good running back. They are a football team that is kind of just feeling its way. . . . When you look at them, they scare you because of the fact that they do have tremendous potential. They really do. There isn't anyplace they don't have speed. They have an awful lot of speed.”

Like Akron, Central Florida was a midlevel Division I-A school willing to play big-name foes on the road for a big payout guarantee. They had turned up as a semiregular on Penn State's schedule, in part because Alabama, beset with NCAA problems, had begged out of its scheduled games with the Nittany Lions in 2004 and 2005, and because of Central Florida's connections with their athletic department.

Central Florida AD Orsini was from Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. He had been recruited by Paterno. His brother, Mike, played defensive back for the Nittany Lions between 1971 and 1973. His father, Tony, had been a senior running back when Paterno arrived in State College.

“Tony was a tailback in 1950,” said Paterno. “He was a good, tough kid, with not a lot of speed—like most Italians—and couldn't run very well, except away from the cops. That was our only claim to fame for speed when I was in Brooklyn. Tony was a great guy. Then when young Mike came along, Tony's son, we recruited him. . . . We debated on whether we wanted [Steve] and we waited too long and then Notre Dame came in and made him an offer and we were late with it.”

The tail end of the ugly hurricane weather blew past State College just before game time, leaving a sunny, windy Saturday afternoon with temperatures in the mid-sixties.

There were wide-open gaps in the parking lots and patches of empty seats inside Beaver Stadium when the 12:10
P
.
M
. game began, an indication of the access problems motorists were experiencing. In addition, many fans, convinced that an easy Lions victory was inevitable, stayed away when they saw the early-morning weather.

The mood among those in the announced crowd of 101,715—the total who had bought tickets—was confident. Even as far as Penn State
had fallen, they couldn't conceive of the Lions losing to 0–2 Central Florida. In the press box, forty-five minutes before kickoff, a sportswriter for the
Altoona Mirror
began banging out his game-story's lead:

“Penn State dominated Central Florida yesterday,” it began, “bouncing back from last week's disappointing loss to Boston College.”

He never did have to rewrite. Penn State clearly “dominated” the smaller Knights, 37–13. But despite the score, it wasn't the kind of victory that forecast great achievements in the Big Ten.

Paterno was transparently angry several times on the sideline. He barked at Mills after the quarterback floated up an ill-advised pass while being hit. He snapped at Scott when the running back returned to the bench following a fumble. He stomped his feet when Terrance Phillips dropped a pass. And when McQueary chastised Phillips for short-arming a pass, Paterno got in his two cents' worth of screaming too.

But it was the turnovers that really irked the coach. Paterno's teams traditionally avoided them. The coach harped constantly at every practice on holding on to the ball and avoiding penalties. “Those are things I'm really serious about,” he would say. Years after graduating, players claimed his high-pitched complaints about fumbles or holding infractions continued to echo inside their heads.

Against Central Florida, Penn State turned the ball over six times—the most by any Paterno team since a 42–21 loss at Alabama in 1982. Mills, with a pair of fumbled snaps and four interceptions, had a hand in all of them. In two weeks, he had thrown eight interceptions and lost two fumbles, single-handedly accounting for ten of Penn State's eleven turnovers.

“We're getting close to being able to compete,” said Paterno. “But if we have six turnovers [at Wisconsin], it won't matter if we take a bunch of six-hundred-pound gorillas.”

On a positive note, Paterno had finally managed to get Robinson fully involved, utilizing the kind of versatile attack he and Hall had envisioned in the spring. The junior had a career-best seven receptions for 93 yards, nine carries for 53 yards, and completed his only pass.

In fact, Robinson was involved on six of Penn State's first eight plays. The junior took the first two snaps at quarterback, with Mills flanked wide, and ran for 12 yards. Robinson was a tailback on the
third play, took the handoff, and picked up 5 more yards. On the fifth play, Robinson was back under center and this time he hit Mills on a 39-yard pass play. After a Tony Hunt carry, Robinson, at tailback again, gained 5 yards and, at wideout on the following snap, caught a 3-yard pass to the UCF 13.

“I thought maybe we hadn't used him enough against BC,” said Paterno. “So we decided we were going to get him involved real early.”

That drive eventually stalled when Mills and center Smith fouled up the exchange and UCF recovered on its own 15.

“Every day the quarterbacks and centers come out ten minutes ahead of everybody else just to work on the snaps,” said an exasperated Paterno. “I don't know. The one on the goal line I think just popped right out. We should never have that. We should never, ever, have a fumble on the exchange. There's some things we may overlook, some things we may not do as diligently as some other things. But we should never, ever, have a fumbled exchange. To have two in one game is very disturbing.”

UCF led briefly after the first of two Matt Prater field goals late in the opening quarter. But three TD runs by Hunt in a span of 5:44 of the second and third quarters, one by backup Gasparato (he would aggravate a leg injury on the run and it would turn out to be the final carry of his career), a 1-yard Mills-to-tight-end John Bronson scoring pass, a safety, and a Robbie Gould field goal gave the Lions the win.

Hunt had his second 100-yard game, collecting 127 on sixteen carries. Austin Scott's exile ended when he entered early in the second quarter. He rushed six times and gained 47 yards.

Mills completed nineteen of the twenty-three passes that weren't intercepted, for 229 yards. Paterno again inserted Morelli late, the freshman completing both of his throws for 9 yards.

The wideouts, except for Robinson and, to a lesser degree, Smith (three catches for 58 yards), struggled again, dropping several balls.

On defense, the young squad appeared to be gaining confidence. With freshman Connor getting considerable time at Wake's outside-linebacker spot, Penn State limited Haynes to 59 yards on the ground. Connor also intercepted a second-quarter pass.

“Dan has been practicing well,” said Paterno, “and I didn't think
Derek had been playing as well as I would have liked. So it was like, well, let's give Dan a shot. And when Dan got in there, he played well.”

Overall, Penn State surrendered only 60 yards on the ground to UCF and another 121 on passes. The Golden Knights could manage only 3 points off the six turnovers. Connor, linebacker Posluszny, and defensive back Lowry were particularly effective in what was the best performance in more than a year by Tom Bradley's defense.

“We're getting better,” Tim Shaw said of the linebackers. “The D line is getting better. . . . I see improvement every day.”

Once again after the game the coach told the press that a home rout of an overmatched opponent had shown him little. The next two games, he said, on the road at Wisconsin and Minnesota, would at last provide some answers about the 2004 Nittany Lions.

“Before this game started, we were focused on UCF,” said Jefferson, “but we talked about how we're going into the Big Ten. . . . I think we all feel we've got a legitimate chance to do some damage in the Big Ten.”

Next Saturday, before a crazed crowd at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, there would be plenty of damage.

AT NOON ON SEPTEMBER 17,
the day before the Central Florida game, Penn State's board of trustees had conducted its bimonthly public meeting in the Nittany Lion Inn's boardroom. Throughout the summer, Paterno's detractors had held out hope that the thirty-two-member body might, during its two football-season meetings in September and November, deal in some way with the festering doubts surrounding the coach. The trustees seldom tackled athletic issues. But football and Paterno, given the fame and fortune that combination had generated for the university, were certainly on their minds that day. Five of them, in fact, had once played for Paterno—Jesse Arnelle, Dave Joyner, Steve Garban, Paul Suhey, and Lester Rowell. And there were indications from Penn State insiders that a few of those ex-players had spent the summer and fall trying unsuccessfully to persuade their old coach to devise some kind of exit strategy.

Instead, with most of its official business having been conducted at a closed-door gathering the previous day, the board concluded an agenda of perfunctory duties in a mere twenty-five minutes. The trustees agreed to submit to the state legislature a $71.8 million budget request for 2005–06, a figure that would restore the roughly $17 million the fiscally strapped legislators had trimmed in recent years.

While the connection was, of course, never mentioned by the board, the university's budget was closely linked to Paterno's fate.
Once-prosperous Pennsylvania, facing the same kind of financial crisis as other aging industrial states, had been unable to support the level of growth Penn State's alumni and administrators insisted was necessary. According to a 2000–01 study by New York's State Education Department, Pennsylvania, on a per-student basis, spent fewer tax dollars on appropriations to public institutions than any other state. In 2003, the state cut more than $10 million from student-aid programs.

Fewer state dollars meant a growing reliance on contributions. And since Paterno was Penn State's unchallenged money-raising champion—not to mention a significant donor himself—any examination of his job status had to be handled with great care and caution. Realistically, they couldn't replace the golden goose until they found a new source for twenty-four-karat eggs.

That's why chairwoman Cynthia Baldwin would say only that while the trustees were “behind Joe,” his future was not a board issue. She had been happy to defer all questions about the coach to President Graham Spanier and AD Curley.

“It's the way it should be,” one anonymous trustee told
The Philadelphia Inquirer
. “We don't want to do things the way they do at some other schools, where board members splinter off into groups and become divisive over a football coach. The president has asked our feelings about Joe on an individual basis, but that's so he doesn't operate in a vacuum.”

Spanier had been so besieged that he had begun responding to queries on the subject only via e-mail. “All of us who are sports fans prefer to win,” he wrote in one, “but it is important to maintain perspective.”

The four-year contract extension, which the coach had signed in May and which they had approved, took some of the immediate focus off the trustees. Privately, though, several remained deeply concerned.

“Just because Joe got the contract extension should not be taken as a sign that we are happy about the state of affairs with the football program,” one trustee told the
Harrisburg Patriot-News
.

Most of the day's remaining business was mundane, the passage of resolutions like the one that officially changed the name of the Pesticide Research Lab to the Chemical Ecology Lab.

When the meeting officially adjourned at 12:25
P
.
M
., the name
Paterno had been mentioned just once, when it was noted that the coach's wife, Sue, had been cited as one of eight 2004 recipients of Penn State's Distinguished Alumni Award.

As far as it related to the dark forces infecting Penn State football, the sloppy victory over 0–3 Central Florida accomplished very little.

It didn't revive the enthusiasm of fans who knew the turnover-prone Lions' next five opponents were formidable Big Ten teams with a combined record of 13–1. “People aren't excited about Penn State football,” senior Brian Tuchalski told the
Los Angeles Times
, which sent a reporter to State College that week to chronicle the unusual angst. “Instead of going to the games, they would rather drink all day and watch it on TV.”

It didn't convince anyone, not even Nittany Lions players, that the program's long-lost swagger and reputation had been restored. “People don't respect Penn State, they don't fear Penn State like they used to,” safety Calvin Lowry said that week. “When you step on the field, there's not that fear in people's hearts like there used to be.”

It didn't quiet the discontent with Paterno. “Joe, fucking retire before they have to fire you for ruining the program you helped build,” the creator of the blog
BottleofBlog.com
pleaded in a posting that week.

And it certainly didn't do anything for the harried coach's mood. The post-victory criticism, especially that directed at Mills, irked him. During his Tuesday afternoon teleconference, he frequently was feisty and curt.

The sportswriters, all but a few of whom participated by telephone, were permitted just one question in the weekly electronic news conferences. They had to make sure it was framed in a way that (A) wouldn't irritate Paterno, (B) wouldn't sound like a criticism of a player or assistant coach, and (C) would produce an answer sufficiently detailed to give them an interesting story.

“I've been finding lately that I spend more time composing my one question than I do writing my story,” Wilkes-Barre's Kellar said. “It's crazy.”

Paterno knew exactly what the writers needed. And usually he gave it to them—long and thoughtful answers that avoided clichés and
often challenged the accepted wisdom. He was equally adept, though, at veering away from subjects he didn't want to discuss. But increasingly in recent years, particularly in the aftermath of player arrests, he had been angered by some of their more probing questions, questions he believed were either intrusive, judgmental, or designed to stir controversy.

Ray Parillo of
The Philadelphia Inquirer
began that week's session by asking what appeared to be a perfectly logical question about Mills, the quarterback who had thrown eight interceptions in the last two games:

“Joe, are you confident that Zack Mills can put the problems that he has had the last couple of games behind him?”

“Yes.”

After a considerable pause and a few unrelated questions came another attempt:

“Last year you made a point to tell people who were critical of Zack Mills that he was doing a lot better job without a lot of support than people perceived. What would your assessment be of how he has played so far?”

“I think Zack is fine.”

Finally, on a third polite effort to elicit a usable response about Mills, Paterno ruled the subject off-limits before the question was even complete.

“Let's get off of Zack,” he said. “Zack is playing good, solid football. Last week I told you that he had some things that didn't go his way. I am not going to get into that. I could get in here and start pointing fingers at the center-quarterback exchange and the whole bit. I think they are doing fine. They are fine. Zack is fine.”

The week between Central Florida and Wisconsin made it clear that this was a different Penn State universe than the one Paterno had presided over for more than a half century. Five or six years ago, the start of Big Ten play would have been cause for optimism and blue-and-white fervor. Now it was an occasion to worry, to assess just how long and difficult the Lions' journey back to respectability might be.

“I think it's going to take a couple of sustained seasons, honestly,”
said Michael Robinson of winning back opponents' respect. “You have one [winning] season and teams think it's a fluke. You have two and they think you're lucky. . . . Every time you go out to play one of them, show them they are playing Penn State. We're still a good football team run by good coaches and a good administration.”

That was not an easy argument to make at that point. Penn State hadn't won a Big Ten opener since 1999. It hadn't won a single Big Ten road game in its last seven. Their last victory in each case had come against Indiana. The Hoosiers, who traditionally had been the conference's doormat, now had company.

“You can just tell how [opposing] players talk during the week of the game,” Lowry said. “When they had the great teams here at Penn State, people wouldn't do that stuff. They'd keep their mouths closed and play. People come with the mind-set ‘We're going to beat Penn State' now. They don't care about our history. People don't fear us. That's what we need to get back.”

Paterno had been short with reporters when they asked him how he thought the rest of the Big Ten looked at Penn State's program on the eve of the conference's opening weekend.

“I haven't got the slightest idea,” he said.

Well, would he at least concede that heading into a road matchup with Wisconsin, a 10-point favorite, the perennially lofty expectations for his program had been diminished?

“I don't think our expectations are anything different than they have been since I've been here fifty-five or some years ago. Our expectations are to go out and play as hard and as well as we can and hopefully win a couple of games. . . . Your memory,” he told the questioner, “can play games with you.”

The Penn State–Wisconsin game was being televised at 4:45
P
.
M
. by ESPN, which considered the matchup attractive enough to serve as a lead-in for
Hustle
, the all-sports network's new telemovie about Pete Rose.

Just about the time that Paterno and his players were arriving in buses at Camp Randall Stadium, Chris Hort, the coach's son-in-law,
was taking advantage of a football-free Saturday back in Pennsylvania. On this first autumn weekend, the leaves in the surrounding hills were beginning to brighten. The sun was shining and the borough's shady streets were clear of the football traffic that clogged them on Saturday afternoons whenever Penn State played at home.

That afternoon Hort, the thirty-seven-year-old husband of the coach's thirty-nine-year-old daughter, Mary Kay, and the father of three of his grandchildren, wanted some exercise. He put on his protective helmet, grabbed his bicycle, and pedaled off from his home in Port Matilda toward State College ten miles away.

Sometime around 3:00
P
.
M
., he was riding down Park Road near Beaver Stadium in what police would later describe as “the shadow of the north end zone.” A female pedestrian noticed him pedaling toward her. She briefly turned her head. When she looked back, Hort was lying motionless on the ground. There were no cars in sight.

Doctors and nurses en route to their afternoon shift at nearby Mount Nittany Medical Center stopped to assist until police and emergency medical personnel arrived. Hort had suffered a serious head injury in the mysterious fall, even though he was wearing the helmet, which showed minor damage in the rear.

“It's possible that he hit his head on exposed metal like a drain of some sort, but we do not know yet,” said State College Police Sgt. C. D. Fishel.

Hort was rushed to the nearby medical center, where doctors quickly summoned a life-flight helicopter to transport him to the intensive-care unit at Altoona General Hospital, thirty-five miles away.

Word traveled quickly to Madison. During the first quarter, Sue Paterno learned of her son-in-law's accident. Accompanied by Curley and her friend Kay Kustanbauter, the executive director of the Nittany Lion Club, the coach's wife departed the stadium on a university jet and flew home. Back in State College, a second university jet was dispatched to Madison to carry home the coach, who still knew nothing of the incident.

Throughout the 615–mile flight to State College, all Sue Paterno could think of was how eerily reminiscent her feelings were. On an afternoon almost thirty years earlier, October 14, 1977, her oldest son,
eleven-year-old David, had fallen off a trampoline at school and fractured his skull. That time it was Joe Paterno who took the initial call. Knowing his wife was driving to Syracuse with friends for the next day's game, he contacted state police, who pulled over the women's vehicle and gave his wife the news.

David was unconscious when doctors in State College sent him to Geisinger Medical Center in Danville. Paterno, praying fervently, accompanied the boy on the sixty-five-mile ambulance trip. “It was,” he later said, “the longest ride of my life.”

For just the second and last time (his father's death in 1955 being the other), Paterno missed a Penn State game. By Tuesday of the next week, the boy and his father had recovered.

Now, on top of all the losses, the criticism, and the recent spate of team-related deaths, came this troubling news.

Maybe, Sue Paterno thought, fate really had conspired against her husband. Perhaps he had, after a half century of fairy-tale success, exhausted all his good fortune.