The Lion in Autumn (33 page)

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.”

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 Michigan.”

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.”

Now he told the Quarterback Club audience, “Sometimes I go to sleep at night thinking I could have done a better job for them.”

That sentiment had brought Paterno to tears during a practice earlier that week. He had told his players then that he'd be back next year because he was afraid of both living and dying without football. Then, realizing that perhaps the mood he had created was too maudlin, he loosened up on the practice field. When a pair of arguing players exchanged punches, Paterno stepped between them. He told them how stupid it was for two guys in helmets and pads to be fighting, then he put on Tamba Hali's helmet and told the combatants to strike him instead.

Now the audience laughed as Paterno got ready for his wrap-up. Despite everything he had been telling his team, and his season-long denials to the media, no one except the coach and his wife really knew his plans. In fact, there was fresh speculation that week that indicated he was going to step down in a dramatic gesture after the Michigan State game. That way, the thinking went, he would have managed to avoid all the embarrassing farewells and media attention that otherwise would have marked his final season.

As his concluding words sounded surprisingly emotional and valedictory, a confused buzz spread through the room. Maybe the rumors were true.

“Hey, you know what?” he said. “No matter what anyone else says . . . in a lot of ways this has been one of the greatest years I've ever been around Penn State. The crowds have been great, even though we're not fighting for the national championship or anything like that. You folks have shown up every week. You put up with my alibis and excuses and my feeble answers to some tough questions which I don't really want to answer.