Turmoil and Triumph
Paterno shrugged off four losing seasons in five years as the Nittany Lions bounced back to capture a pair of Big Ten titles
By Lou Prato
Blue White Contributor
No one could have envisioned at the end of the 1999 season that half of the next decade would be the worst and most depressing period of Joe Paterno’s famed coaching career.
When Penn State opened the 2000 season against USC in the Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, Paterno was on the verge of breaking the late Bear Bryant’s record as major college football’s winningest coach.
Paterno had won 317 games since becoming Penn State’s head coach in 1966, and the seven victories that would pass Bryant’s record of 323 wins seemed inevitable, perhaps as early as Oct. 7, 2000 at Minnesota if the Lions were fortunate to go undefeated from the start of the season. If not then, at least before the year was out.
In his 34 seasons, Paterno had failed to win fewer than seven games just three times: his first year in 1966 (5-5), in 1984 (6-5) and in his only losing season, in 1988 (5-6). Not even Bryant could match that remarkable statistic in his first 34 of 38 years as the head coach at four dif ferent schools from 1945-82.
By the time Paterno finally surpassed Bryant 18 games later, in the sixth game of the 2001 season against Ohio State, Penn State was in the throes of a catastrophic downward spiral that would not end until 2005. There would be losing seasons in four of the first five years of the decade. In 2003 Penn State would finish with its worst record (3-9) since 1931, when football was being de-emphasized.
Bear Bryant’s shadow would fade into in the past, but in that miserable 2003 season another coaching giant, Florida State’s Bobby Bowden, would overtake Paterno as the winningest coach. The 5-7 record of 2000 and 5-6 mark of 2001 ignited a cascade of criticism of Paterno by many fans and the media that subsided briefly in 2002, when the Lions finished 9-4 and played in their first New Year’s Day bowl game in five years. But the criticism renewed with even more intensity in 2003 with a six-game losing streak through October and early November, and reached a crescendo in 2004 with another similar six straight defeats in the same time frame.
Football had passed Paterno by, the critics ranted, as they pointed to his age as the prime cause for all the losing. His dissipating skills were showing up off the field as well as on it, they said, with more and more football players getting into legal trouble for excessive drinking and fighting and even allegations of abusing women.
It was time for Paterno to retire, went the mantra, and turn Penn State football over to a younger man with new and fresh ideas. While praising his past accomplishments, some critics called him selfish for continuing to hold on to the program he had built into a perennial national power. Even the university’s administration appealed privately to Paterno to map out a timetable to retire.
If there was one lasting image that defined Joe Paterno during this tumultuous time period, it was of an angry Paterno sprinting after the Big Ten officiating crew and grabbing the back of referee Dick Honig’s shirt at the end of the nationally televised overtime loss to Iowa at Beaver Stadium early in the 2002 season. He was protesting two crucial passing plays late in the game that went against Penn State, and television replays appeared to prove Paterno correct.
The next week two more questionable calls against Penn State helped give Michigan an overtime win at Ann Arbor, and Paterno railed about the officiating again. His critics in the media jumped on Paterno for disparaging the integrity of the officials.
Quit blaming officiating and coach better, they lectured. As the 2004 season was drawing to a close, the outlook looked bleak for Paterno. With two games left in the year, at Indiana and at home against Michigan State, the Lions were trying to avoid their seventh — and perhaps eighth — straight loss that would tie the 2-8 1931 team as the worst in school history and set a record for successive defeats in one year.
But a late fourth quarter goal-line stand on a cold November day against an Indiana team that was playing as poorly as Penn State that year changed everything, although nobody knew it at the time. The Lions won 22-18 and would go on to win 13 of their next 14 games to propel Penn State back into the elite of college football and literally save Paterno’s coaching career.
“I had a couple of meetings with the people in the administration before the Indiana game that really — I wouldn’t use the vernacular that we use in the locker room — but I got P.O.’d,” Paterno told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a year later.
“I said, ‘You guys just knock it off. If I can keep my staff together, we’re going to surprise a lot of people.’” In the last five years of the decade, Paterno’s teams would win two Big Ten championships, play in two BCS games (Orange and Rose bowls) and in three other bowl games, finish in the top 10 of the final polls three times and narrowly miss playing for the national championship in 2005 and 2008.
They would end the decade on a high note, with a convincing victory over LSU on New Ye a r ’ s D a y i n Orlando and the 83-year old Paterno saying he expects to keep coaching another few more years.
With the end of 2000s decade, Paterno was back at the top of his profession. He was now in the College Football Hall of Fame, too, after the group had waived the rules in 2006 to elect two active coaches into the hallowed pantheon, Paterno and Bowden. He was also once again the winningest coach in major college football with 394 victories and, with the retirement of Bowden at the end of the 2009 season, there’s no one even close to Paterno’s record.
Oh yes, there was one more college football milestone during the decade that could be traced, in part, directly to Paterno. In 2006, the NCAA made television instant replay part of the rules to help rectify officiating mistakes on the field. That’s something even Bear Bryant probably never thought possible.
‘You Either Get Better Or You Get Worse’
One of Joe Paterno’s favorite sayings — and the foundation of his coaching philosophy — best described what happened to his team in the first half of the decade. In 2000, he never expected things would get worse than they were in 1999, when Penn State had been No.1 in several preseason polls and seemingly headed for the BCS national championship game in New Orleans when it collapsed and lost the last three games of the regular season. That disintegration, sparked by a pair of last-minute Hail Mary passes in a 24- 2 3 u p s e t l o s s t o M i n n e s o t a o n Homecoming, was a bad omen for the future. Five more would soon follow.
The year 2000 was expected to be a rebuilding year, but also a breakthrough year for senior quarterback Rashard Casey, whose exciting impromptu running and sharp passing seemed wasted the previous two seasons playing behind starter Kevin Thompson in Penn State’s typical conservative offense.
An impressive performance by Casey in the annual Blue- White Game ending spring practice on May 13 had the fans and media buzzing. But several hours later in his hometown of Hoboken, N.J., Casey was arrested on charges of assaulting an off-duty police officer in a fight outside a tavern.
The reverberations went to the heart of the Penn State football team. The facts of the case were far from clear and had political ramifications that pitted the city’s police chief against his arch enemy, a white Hoboken attorney who had been Casey’s benefactor since Casey was a young boy. And in this ethnic community across the Hudson from New York, the arrest also had racial overtones.
The police officers and most witnesses were white and Casey and a couple of his hometown buddies who were with him that night were black. A grand jury was impaneled and a trial was set for the fall, after the start of the 2000 season. As news about some of the grand jury testimony leaked out throughout the summer, most of the media, including national columnists and sportscasters, called for Paterno to suspend his starting quarterback. Many fans did, too. Some in the media even accused Paterno of placing Casey above the law just so he would win enough games to pass Bear Byrant’s record.
But Paterno stuck by Casey, saying he believed what Casey and his attorney told him privately. Shouldn’t the kid be found guilty first before you hang him, Paterno implied as he vigorously defended his quarterback. There’s no doubt that the Casey incident distracted the team and coaches from the end of spring practice forward and remained so all the way into late October, when the case was finally resolved. But despite the ongoing controversy, Paterno and the fans were optimistic about the 2000 season.
The opener against USC at the Kickoff Classic was to be a major test. Both teams were rated in the preseason Top 25 of both the media and coaches polls, with ESPN/USA Today ranking USC No. 16 and Penn State No. 17. The Lions were favored by 31⁄2 points but looked bad from the start when Penn State’s first four plays resulted in two penalties for false starts, a run for a 1-yard loss and an incomplete pass.
Then a few plays later at their own 41-yard line, USC blocked a punt, turned it into a touchdown and went on to win easily, 29-5. Casey played so poorly that Paterno pulled him early in the fourth quarter. Later, Paterno would point to an e a r l y i n j u r y t o r e c e i v e r E d d i e Drummond as the crucial play in the game because, Paterno said, Penn State had spent the preseason building its entire offensive around passing plays to Drummond — another bad omen for the future.
It got worse the next week when Penn State was expected to beat Toledo at home by 22 points but was t h o r o u g h l y e m b a r r a s s e d a n d thrashed, 24-6. After taking both humiliating losses out on undermanned Louisiana Tech, 67-7, the Lions were embarrassed again by longtime rival Pitt at Three Rivers Stadium, 12-0, in what would be the last of their bitter series dating to 1893 and giving Penn State’s nastiest enemy bragging rights for the decade. Omen No. 4, if you’re counting.
The next week in Columbus was worse when highly regarded freshman defensive back Adam Taliaferro was paralyzed while making a tackle during the second half of another humiliating thrashing, by Ohio State, 45-6. Doctors said he would never walk again, and the scene of Taliaferro lying still on the Ohio State Stadium field with the medical staff of both teams hovering over him undoubtedly was etched forever in the minds of his teammates.
In late October, with Penn State’s season wavering on a 3-5 record, several newspapers and the AP reported C a s e y w o u l d b e i n d i c t e d . T h a t spawned another flurry of media attacks on Paterno for not suspending Casey. But the report was premature. A week later, the Hoboken grand jury completely exonerated the quarterback and all charges were dropped. Few of the red-faced media ever apologized to Casey or Paterno. And three years later, Casey received a six-figure settlement in his lawsuit against the Hoboken Police Department.
The Casey incident set the tone for the decline of Penn State football over the next four years. Everything seemed out of sync. There was a brief respite moments before the opening game of the 2001 season against Miami in an expanded Beaver Stadium the night of Sept. 1. Adam Taliaferro walked onto the field on his own to the cheers of a standing sellout crowd. He would never play football again, but his miraculous recovery would enable him to continue as part of the team, graduate and go on to become an attorney.
But just 10 days after Taliaferro’s emotional entrance at Beaver Stadium, the cataclysmic destruction of New York’s World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 shocked the world, and college football as well as other mundane athletic and entertainment entities seemed so insignificant. Still, life went on and so did Penn State football.
When the 2002 team, sparked by the running of Heisman Trophy candidate Larry Johnson and an aggressive defense, rebounded with a 9-4 record, some pundits and fans speculated that the previous two seasons were probably an aberration. But they were wrong; things got worse again.
Now, it wasn’t just bad luck or the idiosyncrasies of the football gods that caused the disintegration of Paterno’s Nittany Lions from 2000 through 2004. Media and fans alike complained about the conservative offense that had made Paterno’s teams so successful in the past. He needed to be more innovative and wide open, they said. Even Paterno admitted he didn’t like the now popular shotgun or spread formation that many teams had implemented, sending four or five receivers into the mix.
Paterno’s coaching staff seemed in turmoil, too. Since longtime defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s retirement after the 1999 season, eight different assistant coaching changes had been made between 2000 and 2004. That was not the Penn State way, where loyalty in the assistant coaching ranks had been the byword almost since the start of football in 1887. There were varied reasons for all the coaching changes, but the shuffling left a bad public impression.
And then there was the criticism about the quality of the team’s talent, particularly in two hallmark Penn State positions that were always the foundation of Paterno’s success — linebacker and offensive line. From 2001 through 2005 of the NFL Draft, only one player outside of three tight ends was drafted from the linebacking corps or offensive line: tackle Kareem McKenzie at No. 3 by the Jets. Maybe it was just Paterno, his players and staff and his most loyal fans inside and outside of the university who still believed in him when Penn State’s president Graham Spanier and two trustees went to Paterno’s home in 2004 on the eve of the game at Indiana as another depressing season was winding down.
‘If I Can Keep My Staff Together, We’re Going to Surprise A lot of People’
Of course, we now know Paterno was right — once again. Galen Hall, the one-time star quarterback of Rip Engle’s 1961 and 1962 teams, joined the staff in 2004 to take charge of the offense and be the running backs coach.
That same year, Paterno’s quarterback of the 1997 team, Mike McQueary, came aboard to be the new recruiting coordinator and wide receivers coach. They joined two other relatively new assistants who had been there since 2001 — safeties coach Brian Norwood a n d l i n e b a c k e r s c o a c h R o n Vanderlinden — and a veteran staff consisting of offensive line coaches Dick Anderson and Bill Kenney, defensive coordinator Tom Bradley, defensive line coach Larry Johnson and quarterback coach Jay Paterno.
With the exception of one change, when Norwood left after 2007 and was succeeded by graduate assistant Kermit Buggs, the staff is still intact as the next Paterno decade begins. If the downward spiral started with a bad omen in 1999, the turnaround started with a good omen — that 2004 goal-line stand at Indiana.
With Penn State holding on to a shaky 22-18 l e a d a n d 2 : 1 3 l e f t i n t h e g a m e , Indiana had a first-and-goal at the 1- yard line. Four straight times, the Lion defense led by the linebackers and defensive line halted the Hoosiers short of the goal and won the game, 22-18. In the middle of it all were two young linebackers who would become All- A m e r i c a n s i n t h e f u t u r e , P a u l Posluszny and Dan Connor, and an unsung senior linebacker-defensive end named Derek Wake — all of whom would be playing in the NFL before the end of the decade. Linebacker U was b e i n g r e j u v e n a t e d , t h a n k s t o Vanderlinden, whose own pedigree for recruiting and coaching outstanding l i n e b a c k e r s a t C o l o r a d o a n d Northwestern melded perfectly with Penn State’s famous heritage.
Even while the slump in linebacking and offensive linemen was happening, Penn State was regaining its reputation for producing standout defensive linemen behind the recruiting and coaching of Johnson. By the time of t h e g o a l – l i n e s t a n d , s e v e r a l o f Johnson’s defenders were also in the NFL, including two All-Americans from the 2002 bowl team, end Michael Haynes and tackle Jimmy Kennedy, and a tenacious nose tackle name Anthony Adams.
The linebackers and defensive line would continue to flourish for the rest of the decade, with such standout players as Sean Lee, Navorro Bowman and Tim Shaw at linebacker and All- Americans Tamba Hali, Aaron Maybin and Jared Odrick on the line. Even the maligned offensive line would start to rebound, with tackle Levi Brown drafted No. 1 by Arizona in 2007 and center A.Q. Shipley winning the Rimington Award as the nation’s outstanding center in 2008.
Still, that was all in the future when the 2004 team beat Indiana and then Michigan State to end the season at 4- 7. That’s when another good omen occurred. Two of the nation’s most highly sought scholastic players — offensive whiz Derrick Williams and defensive standout Justin King shocked the recruiting world by signing with Penn State.
At the same time, two lightly recruited receivers, Deon Butler and Jordan Norwood, would enroll at Penn State. And before the decade was over, Williams, Butler and Norwood would be at the epicenter of a new wide-open offense that would help give Penn State two Big Ten championships and BCS bowl games.
Then there was the change in Joe Paterno himself. Grudgingly, he began to accept more suggestions from his coaching staff to overhaul or tweak the offense. When Paterno said in the summer of 2005 that his team could make a run at the national championship, he and the staff were certain the talent was in place, not only on offense and defense but also in the crucial element of special teams.
Paterno also knew he had the perfect quarterback to make everything work — Michael Robinson, who Paterno consistently praised for three years as was one of the most versatile players in the country. Robinson had been the backup quarterback to the injury-battered Zack Mills but had often started at running back or receiver.
He had waited patiently to take charge of the Lions’ offense, and his charismatic leadership would be the vital linchpin in Penn State’s — a n d P a t e r n o ’ s — s h o c k i n g turnaround and return to the college football elite. However, media and fans alike scoffed when Paterno and his players talked before the season about winning the Big Ten title and contending for the national championship. They were hardly in anyone’s preseason Top 25 and were usually relegated near to the bottom in any preseason analysis of the Big Ten. The snub at the Big Ten media preview event in Chicago particularly irked the Lion captains who were there — Robinson, Posluszny and cornerback Alan Zemaitis.
“They don’t expect us to be a very good team,” Posluszny complained, “and I don’t think a lot of teams are worried about us.” Robinson said, “I’m telling the guys, ‘if you’re not upset about what’s being written about us, if you’re not upset about how the nation is looking at us, how people are talking about coach (Joe) Paterno, you shouldn’t be here. Go home.’ We have to play with a sense of urgency.”
And in the fourth game of the season, after three relatively easy wins over inferior opponents, the singular moment of urgency in the decade was at hand. Trailing at Northwestern, 29- 27, with 1:39 left in the game and facing a fourth-and-15 at Penn State’s own 15-yard line, Robinson led a dramatic four-play comeback that gave the Lions a stunning 34-29 victory that marked the beginning of a new chapter in the Paterno legend.
Everything else that followed in the last half of the decade stemmed from that last 1:39 in Evanston. No one can be certain what would have happened if the Lions had lost that game at Northwestern, but as several players admitted later, it would have been devastating to the morale and confidence of the team.
Just like the Hail Mary passes against Minnesota in 1999. There definitely would have been no Paternoville created as it was two weeks later when enthusiastic students set up a tent village outside Beaver Stadium before the game against sixth-ranked Ohio State and then noisily cheered as Penn State upset the Buckeyes and leaped into the Top 10 for the first time since 1999. Nor is it likely there also would have been a Big Ten championship in 2005 and maybe not another in 2008, or five straight postseason bowl games — including that 26-23 exciting triple overtime win over Bobby Bowden’s Florida State team in the 2006 Orange Bowl.
Perhaps, stadium whiteouts led by “the best student section in the country,” as deemed by the national media, would have never occurred, either. And maybe it would have gotten worse instead of better for Paterno and his teams as the decade evolved. Of course, not everything went well after 2005.
The 9-4 finishes in 2006 and 2007 were disappointing in comparison, even though the Lions upset Tennessee and beat Texas A&M in the bowl games. For awhile in 2008, it looked like Paterno’s team was headed to the BCS national championship game behind another inspiring quarterback, Daryll Clark, but Iowa spoiled it all with a last-second upset at Iowa City. And it got worse when USC outplayed the Lions in a 38-24 win at the Rose Bowl. Another 11-2 season in 2009 with a surprisingly solid 19-17 victory in the Capital One Bowl over LSU gave Paterno his 23rd team to finish in the Top 10.
Paterno also had his personal ups and downs in the last part of the decade, starting with a freak sideline injury in a late November of 2006 game at Wisconsin. The torn ligaments in his left knee and broken left leg required surgery and a lengthy rehabilitation that made him miss only the third game of his tenure, while coaching others from the press box, including the Outback Bowl win o v e r T e n n e s s e e . T h a t d e l a y e d Paterno’s formal induction into the College Football Hall of Fame until December of 2007.
By then some of his critics were back, calling again for him to retire after those back-to-back nine-win seasons and other off-field player problems. Then, in early 2008 he was hospitalized again with the flu and dehydration. And his health seemed to deteriorate that year, with Paterno hobbled by arthritis and a hip injury that once again put him in the press box and required surgery after the season. But he fooled them all again.
He continued to regain his stamina and health in 2009 as the criticism faded and his players avoided serious problems off the field. Now, as the seventh decade of the Paterno era begins, the legend himself is reinvigorated once again. He certainly doesn’t look his age and he is still mentally sharp. He delegates more and more responsibility to his staff and that staff is virtually intact from 2004 — and still loyal.
Paterno makes no secret that he’d like a crack at another national championship game and he is especially eager about t h e e x p a n s i o n o f t h e B i g T e n Conference. In fact, if Paterno can “coach a few more years,” as he often has said in the past, he might someday see his longtime obsession come true — playing, and winning, a true national championship in a playoff of college football’s best teams. That would be the final epitaph for Joe Paterno because it can’t get any better than that.