Paterno (15 page)

Paterno had relatively little trouble turning down the Steelers because he knew that “unless we become fatheads” his 1969 team would be one of the best in the country. Deep down he believed it would be
the
best team in the country. Penn State’s defense—featuring Jack Ham, Mike Reid, Dennis Onkotz, and Steve Smear, among other stars—would prove almost impossible to score against. The offense was built around three great running backs—Charlie Pittman, Franco
Harris, and the motivated Lydell Mitchell—and a quarterback who had never lost a college game, Chuck Burkhart. It was a dream team, and Paterno thought he might never get to coach one quite as gifted. He believed that Penn State could again win every game. And he believed that this time, unlike in 1968, when his undefeated team finished second in the national rankings, they could finish as the No. 1 team in America.

On the field, things went more or less the way Paterno had envisioned. Penn State outscored opponents 312 to 87 over the season. They shut out West Virginia and Maryland. Only two games all year were close, and one of those was only cosmetically close; the Nittany Lions led Kansas State 17–0 before resting their starters and settling for a closer-than-it-was 17–14 score. The other game was legitimately close, a comeback 15–14 victory over Syracuse that left Coach Ben Schwartzwalder seething about the officiating. “If there were three or five bad calls, there would be no reason to complain,” he said after the game. “This isn’t five or six or even seven calls. This is a case of twenty-five or more bad calls. And it was seemingly unending.”

Schwartzwalder charged Paterno with cursing and intimidating the officials. That set off Paterno’s fierce temper. Through the years, he would sometimes act rashly when he believed his honor or authority were being questioned. “It is one part of my personality I’ve never been able to conquer,” he said with regret in his voice.

As for Schwartzwalder’s sour grapes, Paterno told the
New York Times
, “It’s disappointing that a leading member of our coaching profession would resort to this type of attack after such a great game by two outstanding teams.” As for the complaints about his cursing and intimidating, he said, “I’m not going to even waste time to dignify such an accusation.”

That bit of ugliness aside, Penn State breezed through a marvelous season. After Syracuse, no team came within 20 points of the Nittany Lions. But the larger story, at least at the time, was how little respect the so-called experts had for eastern football. Penn State had started the season No. 3 in the polls and had moved up to No. 2 before the
close victories against Kansas State and Syracuse. After those, the Nittany Lions dropped all the way to eighth in the Associated Press poll (voted by sportswriters), and they were not in the top five in the United Press International poll (voted by football coaches). Even when they moved up to No. 4 in late November, Paterno griped, “This has got to be the first time in history a team wins every game for two straight seasons and doesn’t get a No. 1 ranking a single week.”

In those days, bowl games recruited teams the way teams recruited players. There were four major bowl games—Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Cotton—and a handful of minor bowls, such as the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando and the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston. There were complicating factors involved in the invitations; for instance, a convoluted agreement with the Big Ten Conference stipulated that a team could not go to the Rose Bowl in back-to-back years. But for the most part, bowl scouts in labeled jackets crisscrossed the country in an effort to identify and then woo the right team to come play in their game.

Both the Cotton Bowl and the Orange Bowl wanted Penn State. So, in the third week of November, Paterno and his players had a decision to make. If they went to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, they would play the winner of the Texas–Arkansas game. Both of those teams were undefeated, so that would make for a fascinating matchup, but it would also mean Penn State would play Texas or Arkansas in the Southwest in front of a mostly hostile crowd. The other option was to go back to the Orange Bowl in Miami, an experience the players had enjoyed the season before.

When it came to the national rankings, it did not seem to matter which game they chose. Ohio State was undefeated and all but locked in as No. 1. Many people were calling that Ohio State team the best ever, but because of the strange agreement the Big Ten had with the Rose Bowl, the Buckeyes were not going to
any
bowl game. They would surely end the season undefeated and would undoubtedly win their second straight consensus national championship. Everyone else was playing for No. 2.

This made Penn State’s decision superfluous—or so it seemed. The players wanted to go to Miami again for various reasons. Some of the black players, such as Pittman, Mitchell, and Harris, were reluctant to go to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, which they had heard to be a racist city, and which they still associated with the assassination of President Kennedy a little more than five years earlier. Other players simply thought Miami was a more exciting destination. Paterno probably did not feel especially moved to play Texas or Arkansas in their home territory when the national championship was already decided. In the end, Penn State announced that it would play Missouri, considered by many to be the best offensive team in the country, in the Orange Bowl.

Then, five days after the announcement, Ohio State was stunned by Michigan and its new coach Bo Schembechler, once Woody Hayes’s key assistant. That changed everything. The Associated Press poll suddenly looked like this:

1. Texas

2. Arkansas

3. Penn State

4. Ohio State

5. Southern California

Suddenly, Penn State’s decision to play in the Orange Bowl looked disastrous. Texas and Arkansas would play each other the next week, and the winner of that game would unquestionably be ranked No. 1, with Penn State ranked No. 2. If Penn State had chosen to play in the Cotton Bowl, they would have had a chance to play for the national championship. “We can’t worry about it now,” Steve Smear told a UPI reporter. “But I sure wish we could change our mind.”

They could not change their minds; they had committed to the Orange Bowl. Instead Paterno thought it best that Penn State go on a public relations attack. He gave interview after interview about how
good his team was, how amazing its winning streak was, how Penn State had as good a case as Texas or Arkansas or anybody else to be voted No. 1.

And then the president of the United States stepped in.

PATERNO REMEMBERED THAT YEAR
, 1969, as a time when everything felt heightened, when young people and old shouted and it seemed no one was listening: “Everybody was protesting everything.”

The Texas–Arkansas game received a lot of hype. It pitted the No. 1 team against the No. 2 team in what was being celebrated as the hundredth year of college football. So, yes, it was inevitable that the game would be on the radar of President Richard Nixon. For one thing, Nixon was a huge football fan. He had played football at Whittier College (more to the point, he was on the team). He idolized players and coaches. As David Maraniss writes in his biography of Vince Lombardi,
When Pride Still Mattered
, Nixon had his counselor John Mitchell do a background check on Lombardi as a possible running mate in the 1968 presidential election. (That idea went nowhere; Mitchell found out that Lombardi was a Kennedy Democrat.)

It may have been Nixon’s great love of football that inspired him to get in the middle of the Texas–Arkansas extravaganza, but perhaps even more significant was his love of votes. Nixon had lost Texas by a slim margin in the 1968 election, and he had been crushed by third-party candidate George Wallace in Arkansas. He had no real footing in the South. What better way to gain ground in Texas and Arkansas than through college football?

On the Saturday morning of the game, Nixon flew into Fort Smith, Arkansas, where a sizable crowd welcomed him. “To get this kind of welcome, in the heart of the country, right here in Arkansas, means a great deal to me,” he proclaimed. “All that I know is that we are going to see today, in this one-hundredth anniversary of football, one of the great football games of all time, and both of them I wish
could be number one. But at the end, whichever is number one will deserve it, and the number two team will still go to a bowl and be a great team.”

Paterno was unaware of this speech, which not only gave the official White House No. 1 spot to the Texas–Arkansas game winner but suggested strongly that the loser was the No. 2 team. Apparently Penn State did not even merit mention. The worst indignity for Paterno and Penn State, however, was yet to come.

The Texas–Arkansas game was a classic—at least, that’s how it was portrayed. Texas turned the ball over six times and fell behind 14–0. Then the Longhorns scored a touchdown and added a 2-point conversion. Arkansas quarterback Bill Montgomery, with his team deep in Texas territory, tried an ill-advised pass that was intercepted. This gave Texas the ball and the chance to drive for a touchdown that gave them a 15–14 lead. Montgomery threw another interception in the last minute, and Texas won by the same score with which Penn State had beaten Kansas in the Orange Bowl. People almost immediately began calling it “The Game of the Century.”

Nixon was omnipresent. During halftime he chatted happily with ABC announcer Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson, the legendary former coach at Oklahoma whom Nixon had hired as a special consultant. “Great stuff,” White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman would write in his diary. “Especially at half-time, when P gave thorough analysis of the game so far, and outlook for second half, which proved 100% accurate. And some really good stuff in the locker rooms, talking to the players. A real coup with the sports fans.”

After the game, Nixon visited the victorious locker room and—to the horror of Joe Paterno, his team, and the state of Pennsylvania—presented Texas coach Darrell Royal with a presidential plaque. “For a team to be behind 14 to 0 and then not lose its cool and to go on to win, that proves that you deserve to be number one, and that is what you are.”

This wasn’t even the worst of it. Between the time Nixon landed in Fort Smith and the time he spoke with Royal, it had been suggested to
him that Pennsylvania (another state he lost in 1968) might not take too kindly to being snubbed. A solution was slapped together, one that would become college football legend.

“If I could add one thing while we’re talking here,” Nixon said to Royal. “I do want to say that Penn State, of course, felt that I was a little premature in suggesting this. So we are going to present a plaque to Penn State in the one hundredth year with the longest undefeated, untied record. Is that fair enough?”

“That is fair enough,” Royal answered.

Paterno, unsurprisingly, did not find this fair enough. Or anything close to fair. It was bad enough that Nixon had taken it upon himself to put the power of the presidency behind Texas as the No. 1 football team in the country. But for him to offer Penn State a ludicrous consolation prize for having the nation’s longest unbeaten streak was more than he could handle. Paterno immediately called Penn State’s PR man Jim Tarman and said he wanted to release a statement. Tarman tried to calm him down, but Paterno’s temper was in full bloom. He was not going to take this, not from anybody, not even from the president of the United States.

The statement Paterno released was cushioned by Tarman, but his biting rage still managed to come through:

First, I wish to congratulate Coach Royal, not only on a great victory, but for having the courage to go for two points. This will stand him in good stead in the Cotton Bowl. It appears that Texas and Arkansas read the script from our Orange Bowl game last year and from our win over Syracuse.

In response to numerous telephone calls I received today regarding President Nixon’s television remarks concerning a plaque to Penn State for having the nation’s longest unbeaten streak, I have heard nothing official about any such plaque.

Before accepting such a plaque, I would have to confer with my squad. I’m sure they would be disappointed at this time, as would the Missouri squad, to receive anything other than a
plaque for the No. 1 team. And the No. 1 team following the bowl games could be Penn State or Missouri.

To accept any other plaque prior to the bowl games, which are supposedly to determine the final No. 1 team, would be a disservice to our squad, to Pennsylvania and to the East, which we represent, and perhaps most important to Missouri, which might just be the best team in the country.

Due to the fact that I had to babysit with our four children while trying to watch today’s game I did not get to hear all of President Nixon’s remarks. But it would seem a waste of his very valuable time to present Penn State with a plaque for something we already have undisputed possession of—the nation’s longest winning and unbeaten streaks.

It was this last sentence that Tarman worried about most, but Paterno would not leave it out. He found it insulting to be given a plaque for something that “any idiot consulting a record book could see.” He found it incredible that the president of the United States would butt in to the already preposterous college football system, where champions were picked by ballot and undefeated teams like his were told that they were second best because they didn’t look good enough. For the rest of his life, Paterno fought for a college football playoff, so that, in his words, “the champion could be decided on the field.” Yet even though people would assign great, even unlimited power to Joe Paterno, this was one of many battles he did not win.

Penn State beat Missouri in the Orange Bowl 10–3 in a defensive display so dazzling and overwhelming that Tigers coach Dan Devine called Penn State the best defense he’d seen in twenty years of coaching. Paterno then made his final pleas to the media. None of it mattered when the votes were tallied. Texas came from behind in the last minute and beat a not overly impressive Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl and was named the national champion by the sportswriters. The coaches had already named Texas No. 1 in the UPI poll; in those days they chose their national champion before the bowls even
began. Penn State was undefeated, untied, and No. 2 again. For his part, Nixon was a bit sheepish about the whole thing; at the National Football Foundation’s Gold Medal Dinner just a few days after the Texas–Arkansas game, he admitted that maybe naming a team No. 1 wasn’t the smartest thing for a president to do.