The Lion in Autumn (10 page)

His words, of course, were in vain. Texas was No. 1 in the final voting, Penn State No. 2, Southern Cal No. 3, and Ohio State No. 4.

“Sure we wanted to be number one, but it really wasn't that big a deal,” says Onkotz, who now works with a financial-investment firm near State College. “The media wasn't nearly as big back then, so you didn't hear about it all the time, the way you would now. And, to be honest, we were all so busy. I was a biophysics major, so I had a lot of classes that took a lot of time and work. I didn't have a lot of time to think about who was number one.”

Years later, even after Penn State had won two national championships, Nixon's call still angered the coach. “The bloodcurdling nerve!” he wrote in his 1989 autobiography. “ . . . Nixon
favored
us with an honor that any idiot consulting a record book could see that we had taken for ourselves, thank you, without his help.”

He began to promote a postseason play-off system. Like so much of what Joe Paterno has proposed for college football over the years, his suggestion was seen as thoughtful and constructive. And then it was ignored.

LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
before Penn State's September 4 season opener, and much to the relief of the sweltering thousands who had assembled in Beaver Stadium for the Friday-night pep rally, the oppressive heat that had shrouded State College finally yielded to more comfortable weather.

The heat had not wilted these Penn State fanatics, twenty thousand of whom seemed a tiny gathering as they huddled together in a corner near the 107,282-seat stadium's south end zone. Almost all were wearing some item of apparel bearing the Nittany Lions logo—a chiseled but unthreatening feline whom the school's sports-information staff jokingly called “the chipmunk.” Like religious pilgrims, they had brought along relics and icons—lucky seat cushions, lucky jerseys and hats, lucky buttons that read PENN STATE PROUD, YOU'RE IN LION COUNTRY OR WE ARE . . . PENN STATE!

Further evidence of their fidelity was evident in the hundreds of lumbering RVs, plastered with Nittany Lions paw prints and decals, that were parked in the vast lots outside. Though this was merely a rally in advance of the next day's 3:30
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. game against Akron, some fans had conducted tailgate parties nonetheless. At a few of the more extravagant affairs, life-size cutouts of Paterno (“Stand-Up Joes”) were propped up among the living guests, positioned as carefully and lovingly as figurines in a Christmas creche.

These loyalists, drawn long ago to the program Paterno had pushed to prominence, paid dearly for their devotion. Since 1971, five years after Paterno became head coach, Penn State's season-ticket holders have had to make sizable annual donations to the Nittany Lion Club for the privilege of purchasing tickets. For a $5,000 contribution, each club member was entitled to as many as fourteen seats (at an additional $46 a game in 2004). To upgrade location, a larger donation was required. In all, eighty percent of Beaver Stadium's capacity was controlled by club members, their annual seat-rights contributions totaling nearly $10 million to the university.

Such spend-to-spectate schemes suggested that Penn State, too, had become the kind of money-driven football program Paterno had once sought to tame. Here and virtually everywhere else that battle had been lost. College football was a $5 billion business fed by television, corporate sponsors, and frenzied boosters.

In the late 1960s, when Paterno first revealed his Grand Experiment—an attempt to produce football success
and
educated, well-rounded players—Beaver Stadium held 46,284 fans. His initial game as head coach, against Maryland on September 17, 1966, drew only 40,911. But the Nittany Lions' combined record of 30–2–1 from 1967 through 1969 sent demand spiraling and created three decades of nearly nonstop stadium expansion. Its capacity rose to 57,538 in 1972; 60,203 in 1976; 76,639 in 1978; 83,770 in 1980; and 93,967 in 1991.

Then came the most recent project, the $94 million expansion that added the Mount Nittany–obscuring, 11,500-seat upper deck, plus sixty luxury suites atop the east grandstands. A ten-year lease on one of those fourteen-foot-by-thirty-foot boxes initially cost between $40,000 and $65,000, not including the price of tickets. Five-year leases were even more expensive per season. (But, thanks to a favorable IRS ruling, without which college football would be hard put to exist in 2004, up to eighty percent of the cost of those suites was tax deductible as a charitable contribution.)

Paterno's program generated enough annual revenue to pay for itself and contribute an additional $12–$16 million to support the university's other twenty-eight sports. In 1999, counting the Nittany Lion Club donations, football had produced close to $35 million in revenue.

By 2004 the fans' largesse had become a double-edged sword for Paterno. While their money permitted him a massive recent upgrade in football facilities, it also gave the ticket-holding investors a significant voice. The coach had long been able to reject demands from boosters and alumni. “We are happy to accept their money,” he once said, “but we don't want their two cents' worth.”

That attitude was fine when Penn State was ranked in the top ten every year. But many ticket holders now resented having to pay thousands of dollars a year to watch a sub-.500 team lose at home to Toledo, as the Lions did in the 2000 opener. As the dissatisfaction with Paterno broadened, a tiny minority of boosters threatened to withhold future contributions unless the coach stepped down. University officials acknowledged that athletic giving had leveled off since 2001, just about the time the current slump was getting under way. Nearly $20 million had been donated that year. By 2003, the figure had dipped to $18 million.

Now, heading into a tough 2004 schedule that, realistically, didn't promise much relief, they remained concerned. While most of those then gathering in State College for the Akron weekend weren't yet aware of its existence, the athletic department was already one year into a five-year, $100 million fund-raising drive, “Success With Honor: A Campaign for the Penn State Way.” Publicly, it was billed as a way to fund more athletic scholarships, coaches' endowments, more advising, plus upgrades to its sports-medicine facilities. Privately, some administrators and fans saw the effort, which would be revealed to the public the following month, as insurance against more lost games and more lost donations.

“They'd better get it while they can,” said a 1970 graduate.

The pep-rally crowd included alums, parents of football players and band members, as well as those whose only connection to the university was a lifetime's allegiance to Paterno's teams. Most had come from the big cities along the eastern seaboard and from the tiny communities surrounding State College. All day, long lines of cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks had moved relentlessly into the tiny college town like armies of ants en route to a picnic spill.

Each football weekend, visitors spent roughly $4 million in and around State College. Hotel rates more than doubled, with rooms at the university-owned Penn Stater going for well over $200 a night. Then there were the busy bars and restaurants, the crowded souvenir shops, and the long lines at stadium concession stands.

Some had come to Beaver Stadium on foot: students who resided in nearby dormitories, including the newly arrived freshmen who were getting their first live taste of Penn State football; the returning alums who stayed in downtown apartments and hotels; the big shots in the Nittany Lion Inn, a handsome campus hotel just a short distance down Park Road; and those who had come from a 5:00
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. women's volleyball match in Rec Hall, parading en masse behind the school's Pep Band as it made its noisy way down Curtin Road.

In the twilight, Penn State's campus, described in the football media guide as “picture-postcard perfect,” dripped with nostalgia. Older couples strolled arm in arm along the grassy quad, beneath rows of stately elms and willows. Students and graduates shared cocktails on the patios of elegant Greek Revival fraternity houses. Parents took their blue-and-white-clad youngsters on sentimental journeys through classroom buildings and dormitories.

The university's columned structures, its broad lawns, tree-lined paths, and small-town charm brought to mind all those impossibly earnest 1930s movies about college life that Paterno, who had grown up watching them, called “cornball stuff.” Even the campus buildings appeared to have been named by a sentimental but unimaginative screenwriter—Old Main, Rec Hall, Agricultural Hall. Outside one, a small brick building near the heart of the campus, a row of people waited in line. The Creamery's 110 flavors of ice cream—including the perennially popular “Peachy Paterno” and “JoePa-stachio”—were made on the premises, in part from milk supplied by Penn State's 175-cow dairy herd. On warm football weekends like this, the Creamery sold as many as eight thousand cones a day.

The lovely campus evoked a welcoming atmosphere that had become one of Penn State's most valuable assets. Paterno, in fact, was a partner in Pinnacle Development, a local company that capitalized on Happy Valley's charm. Pinnacle had recently constructed the Village at
Penn State, a $125-million, university-affiliated retirement community. Despite entrance fees that initially ran as high as $250,000, its communities, with syrupy names like Tradition Point and Homecoming Ridge, appealed to golden-aged graduates. Many of those dewy-eyed alums had been specifically targeted by Pinnacle, which had purchased the rights to Penn State's name, logo, and alumni-marketing network.

Paterno's national profile had helped the university create a powerful marketing machine. That night's pep rally, for all its seeming innocence, was in reality a vehicle to bolster Penn State football traditions in a troubled era. The new, fast-paced video that would be debuted at the rally (“One Hungry Pride”), the scores of fresh-faced cheerleaders, the corporate-sponsored calendars handed out to attendees, the Blue Band, even Paterno's appearance, were all part of a massive sales pitch.

A year earlier, school officials had hired Guido D'Elia, a Pittsburgh marketing executive, to find new ways to sell football, along with men's and women's basketball. The hiring hinted at what had become a major topic in athletic administration meetings: Now that Penn State could no longer guarantee an annual bowl appearance to its supporters, how did they sustain interest, attendance, and donations?

D'Elia, with Paterno's blessing, already had injected loud music, fast-paced videos, and a more aggressive, contemporary style into Penn State's traditionally conservative approach. “He throws a lot of ideas out there,” said Curley, “and some of them stick.”

D'Elia was a high-energy urban hipster set down in a football culture that didn't welcome change. He wore shirtsleeves and jeans instead of blazers and khakis, sold with noisy videos instead of staid mailings, and tried to integrate a Luddite head coach into a wired era. The fact that the frenetic D'Elia did not fit the Penn State mold indicated just how desperate the situation was.

When Paterno had talked about starting the season with a Friday-night pep rally, D'Elia jumped at the suggestion. That kind of emotion-charged, feel-good gimmick was more important than ever to maintain a positive and generous attitude among the university's 440,000 living alumni, many of whom had made it clear that they wanted to see change.

Sponsored by Sheetz, a Pennsylvania-based convenience-store chain, and promoted all week on Web sites, radio stations, and newspapers, “Penn State Football Eve” was a resounding success.

School officials had expected eight to ten thousand fans. But by the time Paterno and his hundred-plus players arrived in two large buses, there were twice that number in the stands.

Finally, after the video had been shown, the cheers shouted, and the players introduced, Paterno took the microphone from radio broadcaster Steve Jones's hand and addressed the crowd with the fervor of a revivalist preacher. This would be his official 2004 debut. Feeling born again in his coaching life, he was going to proselytize.

He began, as he often did, with a literary allusion, quoting from the title character's speech before the Battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare's
Henry V
. “If we are marked to die, we are enough / To do our country loss; and if to live, / The fewer men, the greater share of honor.”

The quotation's precise meaning in this context lost to perhaps all but himself, Paterno followed that by instantly transforming himself from intellectual to inciter. Gone was the caution that marked his tentative news conferences.

“Where else would you get this kind of turnout for a team that was three and nine last season?” he screamed. “Nowhere! You are the greatest fans in college football. . . . Tomorrow, with over a hundred thousand people here, I want every single one of them helping this football team get back where we want Penn State football to be. We want to be right on our way to the Rose Bowl. We want to be on our way to another national championship!”

Before the enthusiastic buzz he created had subsided, Penn State's football team had marched out of the stadium and reboarded the buses. They would be making the short trip down Route 220 to the Toftrees Hotel and Resort, a golf-course inn where they spent the nights before home games. Although Paterno didn't believe in athletic dorms because he felt players ought to be fully integrated into the university's life, the Friday nights before football games were different. All the alcohol-fueled noise made dorm-room sleeping nearly impossible.

“I'd much prefer to have them sleep in their own rooms, but how do you accomplish that?” he said. “On a college campus? It's impossible. We play at twelve o'clock. We have three thousand students that don't wake up until twelve-thirty. Maybe if we were drawing three hundred people or so you could. But how can they get a good night's sleep when you have parties and unsupervised people coming in and out?”

The coach was not on either bus. He preferred to sleep at home, which was only 1.4 miles from the stadium. So as the rally concluded with sparkling fireworks exploding loudly in the artificial-light-bleached sky, he walked through the parking lots and up onto Park Road.

Then, flanked by the stillness of the dark university on one side and the soft glow of his College Heights neighorhood on the other, he headed toward home.

By 8:30
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. Saturday, along busy College Avenue, Paterno was ubiquitous.