Paterno (27 page)

“If you’re lucky,” Paterno said, “you get to coach a guy like Shane Conlan once in your life.”

THE DAYS LEADING UP TO
the 1987 Fiesta Bowl were mayhem. Miami coach Jimmy Johnson had arrived in Phoenix ahead of his players, which allowed them to hatch a plan to show the nation just how serious they were about this game: they came off the plane wearing army fatigues. Penn State players, of course, wore jackets and ties.
Sports Illustrated
had just named Paterno Sportsman of the Year—only the second coach, after UCLA’s basketball legend John Wooden, to be so honored—and sportswriter Rick Reilly’s story painted the now fully formed portrait of Saint Joe. “Over the last three decades,” Reilly wrote, “nobody has stayed truer to the game and at the same time truer to himself than Joseph Vincent Paterno, Joe Pa to Penn State worshipers—a man so patently stubborn that he refuses to give up on the notion that if you hack away at enough windmills, a few of the suckers will fall.”

The narrative, good versus evil, had been put into motion.

“Look, they weren’t bad guys,” Trey Bauer insisted. “It was more like the inmates were running the asylum. They were just doing whatever they wanted. They were so talented, I think they figured it didn’t matter what they did—they were going to destroy us anyway.”

Jimmy Johnson seemed to have the same attitude. In his first press conference, he casually referred to Paterno as “Saint Joe” and at one point during the week said with a wink, “Everybody respects Joe’s image . . . and nobody would dare say anything bad about it.” Johnson seemed to think the army fatigues stunt was beneficial to his team’s unity. “We have a oneness I’ve never seen before,” he announced.

Five days before the game, both teams gathered for a steak fry; they were supposed to present little skits to poke fun at each other. Penn State went first, led by punter John Bruno. He made fun of Jimmy Johnson’s hair in a bit that included a giant can of hairspray. He also made a joke that was in poor taste, about how Penn State had ideal
race relations, so much so that they even let the black player eat at the training table with the white players once a week.

There would be some disagreement about the impact of Bruno’s jokes. A few news reports at the time suggested Miami’s players were actually more offended by the hairspray joke than the racial one. Miami players and others later claimed that they were reacting to the training table joke. But it seems likely Bruno’s jokes had nothing to do with what followed. When it was time for the Hurricanes to do their skit, Miami’s Jerome Brown tore off his clothes to reveal the army fatigues underneath—confirmation that what was about to happen wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision but had been planned—and shouted, “We’re not here for you all to make monkeys of us. We’re here to make war. Did the Japanese sit down with Pearl Harbor before they bombed them? Let’s go!” With that the Miami players walked out, all of them now wearing fatigues. Johnson and the other Miami coaches just watched.

John Bruno would cut some of the tension with the best line of the night—“Hey, didn’t the Japanese lose that one?”—but the scene was chaotic. “Are you kidding me?” said Bauer. “Who was in charge? I mean, we had too much respect for Joe to walk out to the bathroom much less walk out of the place.”

Paterno was privately outraged by the scene. “Combat fatigues?” he wrote in his autobiography. “Why not hang bayonets and hand grenades on their belts too?” But he was also thrilled. The trap was set. It was clear the Miami coaches and players did not just want to beat Penn State; they wanted to destroy and embarrass Penn State. And those were exactly the ambitions Paterno was hoping for.

“They left after they ate, right?” Paterno joked with reporters. “Typical football players.” Quietly he told his players not to comment on the walkout. They would have plenty to say once the game began.

FOOTBALL COACHES HAVE AN ARCHETYPE
in their minds, a player who represents the kind of athlete they love to coach. It could be a
quarterback who can run and throw and adjust to whatever the opposing defense offers. Paterno was lucky enough to have guys like that; Todd Blackledge, Chuck Fusina, Kerry Collins, and Michael Robinson come to mind. He also had quarterbacks who had a knack for winning, like John Shaffer. He was blessed that way.

But it might not be a quarterback. It might be a linebacker who is tough as sandpaper, who makes tackle after tackle and, in the biggest moment, finds ways to force the fumble or tip the pass or make the interception that wins the game. Paterno was doubly blessed there. The list of wonderful linebackers at Linebacker U is long: Jack Ham, Lance Mehl, Shane Conlan, Brandon Short, and, well, you could keep going for a while.

Then again, the archetype could be a running back, someone who just loves running the ball, again and again, never tiring, never wilting, a runner who pounds forward and finds a way to drive into the end zone and will, every now and again, break a long run that destroys the other team’s spirit. In this Paterno was triply blessed. The list of astonishing and impassioned runners at Penn State is even longer than the list of linebackers: Charlie Pittman, Franco Harris, Lydell Mitchell, Curt Warner, D. J. Dozier, Blair Thomas, Ki-Jana Carter, Larry Johnson, and, of course, John Cappelletti.

Over forty-six years Paterno would coach brilliant players at all positions, and those young men would be inspired by different muses, driven by different demons, motivated by different methods. As Paterno said about Lydell Mitchell and Franco Harris, who played for him at the same time, “They were different. Lydell would run through a wall for you. Franco would walk to the wall and feel for cracks.”

Still, if Paterno had the perfect player in mind, the player who represented what it was all about for him as a coach, the player might have been Bob White. He grew up in Haines City, Florida, where migrant workers harvested citrus and the Ringling Brothers had stationed their theme park, Circus World. He never knew his father, and he worked in the citrus groves and tobacco fields to help his mother and grandmother keep going. His middle school basketball coach, Bob
Eisenberg, saw a bright future for Bobby White. He was an extraordinary young athlete, but more than that, he had a kind of wisdom that was uncommon for a young man. Eisenberg was from McKeesport, in the heart of Pittsburgh, and he thought Bobby would have a better chance up north. “My mother was against it,” White recalled. “But she knew it was a good chance.”

White moved to McKeesport and lived with a social worker for a while, then a school librarian. He developed into an extraordinary football player. He was big and strong and fast, but what separated him was that he played with this quiet rage. “If it was Bobby’s responsibility to control the A-gap,” Trey Bauer said, referring to the gap of space between the offense’s center and left guard, “it wouldn’t matter if the whole place caught fire. He was going to control the A-gap.”

More than a hundred schools recruited White. He remembered that they promised him dreams: he would be a starter right away; he would be an All-American; he would make millions in the NFL. But Bob Eisenberg was right about White’s uncommon sense. He did not fall for dreams. White wanted to play for Joe Paterno.

Paterno was skeptical. He loved the young man’s spirit, but he did not think White could succeed as a student at Penn State. In his autobiography he wrote, “Here was a kid who had never read a whole book!” White would say that was an exaggeration, but only a slight one. He had not grown up in an environment of reading, to say the least. But when he wanted something, he fought to get it. He spurned big offers, under-the-table promises, guaranteed fame. He wanted to play for Joe Paterno.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Paterno said: he would take White on, but only if he agreed to be personally tutored by Sue Paterno. White happily agreed. Together Sue and Bob read
Huckleberry Finn
,
Moby-Dick
, and
A Tale of Two Cities
, classic junior high and high school books about which White said, “Honestly, I had never heard of them.” He struggled with his classes at first, but he was smart and he was driven, and in time he graduated with a degree in administration of
justice. Not long after that, he got his master’s degree in counselor education. He was also captain of the 1986 Penn State football team.

On the first play of the Penn State–Miami game, Penn State quarterback John Shaffer was sacked for a 14-yard loss. Two plays later, he was sacked again. This was how it would go all day. Penn State’s offense had no chance to move the ball against Miami’s brilliant and ferocious defense. “Years later, I watched a tape of the game,” Trey Bauer recalled. “And I said, right in the middle, ‘We have no chance to win this game.’ And I
played
in that game.”

Paterno was unconcerned. He had suspected that his offense would struggle against Miami; he had told his offensive coordinator Fran Ganter that the offense’s main job was to avoid turning over the ball. The real question in his mind was whether Miami’s offense would fall for Penn State’s ploy. It didn’t look good at first. Miami took the ball and drove down the field. Quarterback Vinny Testaverde completed a pass to Michael Irvin. He completed another to Charles Henry. He completed a 10-yarder to Alonzo Highsmith.

Then Paterno saw the first sign that the plan would work. On third down and 2 at the Penn State 28, Testaverde threw a long pass into the end zone that was incomplete. That made it fourth down, and Miami was in field goal range. But they were not interested in kicking field goals. The Hurricanes had worn battle fatigues; they had walked out of dinner; they had compared themselves to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. All season long they had gotten in various kinds of trouble off the field. They had come to Arizona to score touchdowns and win big and show everyone in America that they were invincible. They went for it on fourth down, and Charles Henry dropped a pass over the middle to give the ball back to Penn State.

“You have to understand something about Joe,” Bauer said. “He didn’t care how much we won by. Ever. He didn’t care what the game looked like. He didn’t care who got the credit. He didn’t care what
anybody said about it. All he cared about was playing to win—one point, seven points, thirty points, absolutely no difference to him.”

This was at the heart of the Paterno plan engineered by Sandusky: Penn State wanted to win; Miami wanted to destroy. So the Penn State defense would back up, back up, let Testaverde see the field, let the receivers catch passes, let Alonzo Highsmith gain yards. But they would never give Testaverde the same defensive look. When the receivers caught those passes, the Penn State defenders would hit with such force that receivers would think twice about catching another. And as for Highsmith, Paterno gambled that Miami would be too impatient and single-minded to run the ball every time. “If Miami had given Highsmith the ball forty times,” said Bauer, “we wouldn’t have known what to do. But they didn’t. And Joe knew they wouldn’t.”

The second time the Hurricanes had the ball, they were driving down the field again when Testaverde completed a pass to Irvin over the middle. Ray Isom, Penn State’s short but powerful safety, rushed in, pounded Irvin, and forced a fumble. It was one of a couple of huge hits Isom had in the game. Irvin was shell-shocked by the hit. He would drop five or six passes in the game before it was over. After the game, he would claim the ball was slippery.

The third time the Hurricanes had the ball, they were driving again. But on third down, Testaverde grew impatient—not for the last time—and threw the ball downfield, where it was intercepted by defensive back Duffy Cobbs. The first quarter was over. Miami had not scored. The intensity was overwhelming; both teams felt it. They screamed at each other and cursed at each other and a couple of fights almost broke out. At one point, a Miami player hit Shaffer late in what Paterno called “the worst cheap shot I’ve ever seen.” But his plan was working. Frustration was building on the Miami sideline.

Miami did score a touchdown in the second quarter when Shaffer fumbled deep in Penn State territory. Paterno groaned. As he had told coach Fran Ganter, the offense had to hold on to to the ball or the plan could not work. But Shaffer promptly led the team on a long scoring drive to tie the game. He completed two critical third-down
passes—two of only five completions he would make all night—and he ran for the touchdown himself after faking a pass. The score was 7–7. NBC’s Bob Costas spent halftime on television interviewing President Ronald Reagan.

In the Penn State locker room, Paterno told his team that the plan had gone brilliantly; if not for the fumble, it would have been perfect. He knew that Miami’s players and coaches were fully ensnared in their own pride. He knew, absolutely knew, that the Miami players were angry, baffled, and determined to come out in the second half and end this nonsense. And this was exactly how the plan worked. They would come out even more impatient and distracted. Penn State had pounded and confused the Hurricanes into a state of panic, and the Nittany Lions had dozens and dozens of new looks to unveil in the second half.

When Miami got the ball at the start of the second half, Paterno got his confirmation. Highsmith dropped a pass. Irvin dropped a pass. The next time Miami got the ball, Testaverde tried to throw a bomb once, then got sacked trying to throw another. The next time, Testaverde slipped and threw a pass that Shane Conlan intercepted.

It was like hypnosis. Though Highsmith was running free—he would gain 119 yards—and though the game was tied, Johnson and the other Miami coaches refused to give him the ball. They were still going for the knockout. On the first play of the fourth quarter, Testaverde threw another interception, this time to Penn State linebacker Pete Giftopoulos.

Miami did manage a field goal in the fourth quarter, on a drive built around two long Highsmith runs, to take a 10–7 lead. But on their next possession, they were again throwing downfield, and again Testaverde’s pass was intercepted, again by Conlan, who ran the ball all the way to the Miami 5-yard line. Penn State offensive lineman Keith Radecic recovered a fumbled snap, and D. J. Dozier scored on a 6-yard run. It seemed impossible to just about everyone watching. Penn State led 14–10.