When the Lions Roared: Joe Paterno and One of College Football's Greatest Teams - Softcover

Contz, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1629373729 ISBN 13: 9781629373720

Verlag: Triumph Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

The 1982 Penn State national championship team was not only one of Joe Paterno's best, it was one of the best teams college football has ever seen. In When the Lions Roared, Bill Contz, one of the squad's offensive linemen, details that special season and the experience of playing for a legendary coach. Featuring dozens of interviews with former players, this book provides anecdotes from the epic contests of that season while also proving statistically why this Nittany Lions team stands up against all of the talented teams that came before and after. Also featuring a foreword and reflections by Todd Blackledge, Penn State's 1982 starting quarterback, this is an essential read for Nittany Lions faithful.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bill Contz was a starting offensive lineman on Penn State's 1982 national championship team. He played six seasons in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns and New Orleans Saints. He lives near Pittsburgh and works in medical device sales. Todd Blackledge was the starting quarterback on Penn State's 1982 national championship team. Blackledge won the Davey O'Brien Award as the nation's top quarterback after the 1982 season and was the seventh pick in the 1983 NFL Draft. Blackledge has worked as a television analyst for more than 20 years and currently is part of ESPN's College Football Primetime team. He lives near Canton, Ohio.

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When The Lions Roared

Joe Paterno and One of College Football's Greatest Teams

By Bill Contz

Triumph Books LLC

Copyright © 2017 Bill Contz
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62937-372-0

Contents

Foreword by Todd Blackledge, 
Introduction, 
1. Halloween Night of 1981, 
2. Football Royalty and a No. 1 Rival, 
3. The Fiesta Bowl, 
4. From Basketball Star to Quarterback, 
5. The 1982 Preseason, 
6. The Start of an Epic Season, 
7. Agony and Ecstasy, 
8. Getting Up off the Mat, 
9. The "Playoff" Stretch, 
10. The Sugar Bowl Timeline, 
11. The Secrets to Our Success, 
12. Rebuttals, 
13. One of the Greatest, 
14. Reflections on Paterno, 
15. Where Are They Now?, 
Acknowledgments, 
Sources, 
Photo Gallery, 

CHAPTER 1

Halloween Night of 1981

Just past the halfway point in the 1981 campaign, Penn State took its 6–0 record to Miami, where dreams of an undefeated season came to an abrupt end on rainy Halloween night at the hands of Jim Kelly and Hurricanes coach Howard Schnellenberger, who had begun his career at his alma mater (Kentucky). After two years in Lexington, he moved to Tuscaloosa in 1961 to join Bear Bryant's staff at Alabama. His timing could not have been better as the Crimson Tide won their first national title under Bryant that year on the strength of a defense that allowed a paltry 2.3 points per game, never surrendering more than seven points in any single contest.

Part of Bryant's national recruiting philosophy was to attract players from other parts of the country that could add different dimensions to his program. As if to test the mettle of his newest assistant, Bryant dispatched Schnellenberger to western Pennsylvania to lure the area's top quarterback, Beaver Falls' Joe Namath, to Tuscaloosa. Legend has it that Bryant told his young coach something to the effect of "If you don't come back here with Namath, then don't bother coming back at all." Schnellenberger and Bryant's success in recruiting players like Namath would play a pivotal role in galvanizing the Alabama program. The Tide would win three national championships during the five years Schnellenberger served on Bryant's staff.

Schnellenberger left Alabama following the 1965 season and spent the next 13 years in the NFL, including two stints with Don Shula's Miami Dolphins. Schnellenberger returned to the college ranks in 1979 to resurrect the program across town in Coral Gables. One of his first moves in changing the University of Miami's football culture was to replicate what Bryant had him do two decades earlier — find a strong-armed kid from western Pennsylvania to run his offense. This time around he handed the reins to Jim Kelly from East Brady, a small town an hour's drive north of Pittsburgh.

Miami, however, was not Kelly's top choice. Like a lot of scholastic players from the area, Kelly wanted to play football for Joe Paterno and become the Nittany Lion signal-caller. "I'd always been a big Penn State fan," Kelly said. "I went to Coach Paterno's football camp during the summers before my junior and senior years of high school. I had my heart set on playing at Penn State. But then Coach Paterno called me and he told me that he'd already signed two all-state quarterbacks and that he didn't have a spot for me on the team as a quarterback. He did offer me a full ride as a linebacker. I appreciated the scholarship offer, but I wanted to go somewhere and play quarterback. That's how I ended up going to the University of Miami."

In the fall of 1979, Kelly would again visit Happy Valley — this time as a redshirt freshman for "The U." Despite ridiculously short notice, Kelly would exact revenge on Joe for not making him a Nittany Lion quarterback by engineering a stunningly one-sided 26–10 upset.

"I went into that week as the backup QB," Kelly said. "Coach Schnellenberger told me after the pregame meal that I was going to be the starter. I was shocked. But I knew it was an opportunity to show that I could play. Coach gave me that opportunity, and I made the best of it."

Two years later the stakes were even higher.

During its national broadcast, ABC aired an ominous graphic that listed four teams previously ranked No.1 in the country, and all had lost the week following their ascension to the top spot in the polls. Miami had not hosted a No.1-ranked opponent in the Orange Bowl since September of 1975. They entered this game with a misleading 4–2 mark. (Both of those losses came on the road to top 20 teams.) Their defense was holding opponents to 13 points per game while our offense was averaging a robust 37 points and 308 rushing yards per game.

Something had to give.

Revenue generation at the aging Orange Bowl facility was evidently a concern as the venue hosted an outdoor concert featuring both The Beach Boys and the Commodores the night before the game. While not uncommon at more modern facilities with synthetic turf, the event would wreak havoc with the natural grass playing surface. "When we came out to warm up the next day, we found shards of glass out of the field," recalled former Nittany Lions running back Jeff Butya. Strong storms would arrive shortly after intermission and turn the field into a near-quagmire.

Injuries also played a pivotal role in our upset loss on All Hallows' Eve. Weeks earlier junior tailback Curt Warner had scorched Nebraska for 238 yards in a key road win. Three games later he dazzled an overmatched Syracuse defense with a school-record 256 yards rushing in the Carrier Dome. Warner literally established himself as the greatest show on turf a full quarter century before the "other" Kurt Warner led his high-flying St. Louis Rams offense to victory in Super Bowl XXXIV. During the first five weeks of the '81 season, Curt had quietly become a serious contender for the Heisman Trophy (eventually awarded to USC's Marcus Allen) by rushing for 838 yards on 115 carries, a gaudy 7.3 yards per carry that led the entire country.

But Curt tweaked his hamstring in practice the week before the West Virginia game, and the injury severely limited his effectiveness. Warner played sparingly against Miami, picking up just 21 rushing yards. (In addition, our senior co-captain and inspirational leader on defense, linebacker Chet Parlavecchio, missed the entire contest with an injury.) The aggressive Hurricanes defense had every intention of shutting down our running game by crowding the line of scrimmage. That strategy, along with the fact that Curt wasn't close to 100 percent, were key reasons why we trailed for the entire game.

We self-destructed, missing four field goals while turning the ball over three times in the final quarter, including twice in the final three minutes. Joe also committed a rare strategic error by failing to call his final timeout with the ball on the Miami 2-yard line at the end of the first half. Make no mistake, it was mission accomplished for a stingy Miami defense that included seven future NFL draft picks and stifled a running attack that had been cranking out more than 300 yards per game.

Enter Todd Blackledge, who had been somewhat inconsistent in his first full year as our starter. Time and again, Blackledge rose to the occasion against Miami. Despite enduring a fierce pass rush, he almost single-handedly pulled the game out by throwing for more than 350 yards and breaking several Nittany Lions passing records while outplaying Kelly. Trailing 17–0 going into the final period, we mounted a furious comeback and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Triumph Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1629373729
• ISBN 13: 9781629373720
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 235
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland