Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football

by Bacon, John U.

  Like blackjack, which rewards only those players who know how to double-down and split pairs at the right time, football only rewards those teams that know how to break the big play—on offense or defense. And that’s what they were looking for: the opportunities Ohio might give them to go big, be it exploiting a slow cornerback, taking advantage of a linebacker’s failure to read a play-action pass, or a coordinator’s weakness for blitzing too often. They knew they weren’t going to beat many teams that season by grinding out endless 4-yard gains.

  O’Brien saw plenty to admire, however: “You look at this, and you know: they’re gonna try to strip the ball, every play. They’re good at that.

  “We’d better be ready.”

  • • •

  Monday, August 27: A few hours later, O’Brien was working the overhead in the team room, which looks like a movie theater with a blue-and-gray carpet, folding seats with blue cushions, plus retractable desktops. Many players took notes, some just sat and listened, but everyone paid attention. They knew they would be graded in a few days, on national TV.

  “This is the best Ohio team in the Frank Solich era—or probably ever,” O’Brien said. He read his players some confident quotes from Ohio’s players, then said, “They will be very aggressive. They will try to strip the ball every time. And Matt [McGloin], if you think you can just lob it up the middle to [tight end Matt] Lehman all day, you got another think coming.

  “But they have trouble with tempo—which is surprising, since they practice against a fast offense every day. They can’t get lined up fast enough. They’ll have trouble with NASCAR,” which was Penn State’s code name for their hurry-up, no-huddle offense. “So let’s get that going from the start and run ’em down.”

  When they were on defense, O’Brien explained, they had to stop quarterback Tyler Tettleton, the son of major league All-Star catcher Mickey. “He can run, he’s athletic, he can throw. We’ve got to contain him. If we don’t, it’s gonna be a long day.”

  O’Brien turned off the overhead, the lights went up, and he stood up to look directly at his players. Knute Rockne, it’s said, never dressed himself. Clothes fell on him. When O’Brien’s coaching, he could be the great-grandson of the Notre Dame legend: baggy, blue sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt, with his trademark towel draped over his shoulder.

  But also like Rockne, when O’Brien spoke to his players, he knew how to reach them. He paced around slowly, hands on hips, then stopped, looked right at them, and raised his right hand to punctuate his points.

  “I was thinking about this earlier today, watching tape in my office. You have done everything we’ve asked you to do, to this point. You’ve worked hard in the weight room. You’ve stuck together.

  “Everybody is involved. Everyone’s dressing Saturday. One team.

  “But this whole thing boils down to twelve weeks. Twelve weeks! That’s it! I’m just telling you the truth.

  “Follow your seniors. And, seniors, you’ve got to lead.

  “It all starts Saturday. And it will come faster than you think.”

  • • •

  Thursday night, August 30: On any football team, the importance of the quarterback is obvious. On Penn State’s 2012 team—with a new staff, a new system, and the NCAA propping the door open for their players to leave—the pressure on the position might have been the greatest on any team that season.

  O’Brien had decided that position would be filled by “the fiery redheaded Irishman from Scranton,” as strength coach Craig Fitzgerald described the walk-on-turned-starter, thereby putting Matt McGloin ahead of Robert Bolden, Jay Paterno’s favored signal caller.

  “McGloin got all the receivers together this summer,” Fitzgerald said. He got them all to run routes and seven-on-seven drills, then walked down to the football building to watch film on his own every day.

  “And he never shuts up! You can’t shut him up. He’s not intimidated by anything, and he’s gonna speak his mind.

  “I love ’im.”

  • • •

  At the team’s dining hall, on another beautiful late-summer night, you could watch the sun start its descent over Mount Nittany, while enjoying a first-rate meal of—well, just about everything you could think of: steaks, lasagna, chicken, stir-fry. And those were just the entrées.

  McGloin sat down with his center, Matt “Stank” Stankiewitch, offensive guard Eric Shrive, and equally massive defensive end Pete Massaro, to plow down a few thousand calories each. All four were raised in eastern Pennsylvania’s rich football culture, the Keystone State’s answer to Friday Night Lights: small, blue-collar towns, whose steelworkers and coal miners still fill the stands every Friday night, whether they have kids in school or not.

  Sit down at any college football team’s dinner, and you are quickly reminded just how local a game college football really is. Almost everyone on the team played with or against at least one teammate, and usually half of them. And they never forgot.

  McGloin started on the Scranton High School’s varsity basketball team as a freshman and went on to set the school record with over 1,300 career points. He thought basketball might be his ticket, but, he says, “I never focused on one sport.”

  “He never passed the ball, either,” added Shrive, a high school teammate, stealing the stage from Stank, who usually handled comebacks.

  When Louisiana native Mike Mauti moved to State College, he had never met anyone from Pennsylvania. But as soon as he met Matt Stankiewitch, Mauti said, “I knew immediately: that is what someone from Pennsylvania looks like.” Tall, beefy, and strong, with his bright red hair cut in a perfect flattop, Stank played the stereotype of the offensive lineman to a tee: a free-speaking smart-ass, safe in the knowledge that, like all linemen, he would rarely be quoted. He grew up in tiny Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, about ninety minutes south of Scranton, and he still remembered the first time he met McGloin, at midfield for the pregame coin toss.

  “He wasn’t anything like I thought he was when I met him in high school,” Stank said. “The dude didn’t say anything. I figure, shy guy.”

  “I let my performance speak for itself,” McGloin said.

  “That is not true,” Massaro corrected.

  “Now, I know: this guy can’t shut up!” Stank said. “I remember when I tried to sack him—”

  “Key word: tried,” Shrive underscored, since he had faced Stank that night.

  “I think he threw for four miles that game,” Stankiewitch said. “You know why they passed so often? Because they knew if they ran, they had to go through me!”

  Stank’s teammates busted on him for that, then turned the conversation to the Big 33, an annual all-star game that had pitted the best thirty-three players in Pennsylvania against their counterparts in Ohio for over fifty years. A stunning stat: of the forty-seven Super Bowls, every single one of them has featured at least one player from the Big 33. From Pennsylvania alone, the list includes Joe Namath, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Brian Kelly, and Kerry Collins, and from Ohio, Orlando Pace, Ben Roethlisberger, and Archie Griffin.

  “The Big 33—we were all picked for that,” Stankiewitch said, waving his glass of Gatorade over the dining hall, before pointing to McGloin. “But not him.”

  “They picked John Laub instead,” Massaro said.

  “Sunseri got picked, too,” McGloin recalled. “He took my scholarship to Pitt. Where’s Laub now?” McGloin asked, feigning ignorance with a cocksure grin.

  “I have no idea what he’s doing now,” Stank said.

  “I think he went to Richmond,” Massaro answered.

  “And I’m starting at Penn State?” McGloin asked, then drank his Gatorade. “Hm. Interesting.”

  After enjoying his little joke, McGloin said, “I got looks from some schools. I went to camps. I talked to a couple Lehighs and Colgates, but I really wasn’t interested in playing D-II. Then Penn State called and wanted me to be a preferred walk-on. After seeing the campus and the facilities, that was it.”


  In doing so, McGloin became the first member of his family to attend college—which most of the guys at the table could also claim.

  When I told McGloin I had seen him light up Michigan’s defense for 250 yards and 41 points in 2010—in the first start ever for a walk-on quarterback under Paterno—Stankiewitch cut me off:

  “Don’t feed his ego.”

  “He doesn’t need it,” Massaro agreed.

  “He can’t even fit his head through the doorway as it is,” Stank added.

  McGloin turned to me. “I gotta deal with this shit every day.”

  “You notice McGloin’s not on the ‘watch list’ for any awards this year?” Stank added.

  “I’m not!” McGloin said. “Nothing new there.”

  Everyone in that dining room knew, however, that all the rest of them combined would not receive half the scrutiny the unheralded quarterback would face, and from all directions: generations of fans, alums, lettermen, and classmates, not to mention the media, which would be watching Penn State more closely than virtually any other team in the country that season.

  One way or the other, the redheaded walk-on from Scranton would be remembered.

  • • •

  Before dinner ended, I asked them who was keeping the team together.

  “O-B,” Massaro said without hesitation, “and Mauti and Zordich. The Bash Brothers.”

  “Me and McGloin and [Miles] Dieffenbach,” Stankiewitch countered, “we’re the Blood Brothers. When there’s blood on the ball or McGloin’s hands or his pants, he’s always asking, ‘Who’s bleeding?’ Usually, it’s me.”

  Shrive rolled his eyes, then turned to me. “What Massaro said.”

  • • •

  I met with the Bash Brothers an hour later in a study room at the Academic Center.

  “The world’s crazy right now,” Mauti said. “Everything we thought was so stable—our program, our school, our reputation—all of a sudden, you don’t know what’s going on outside the building.”

  “It’s all crazy outside these walls,” Zordich clarified, “but in our own little world, in our little bubble here, nothing’s even a little wrong, to be honest. In all seriousness, we’re happier now than we’ve ever been here.”

  “That’s across the board,” Mauti said. “Every guy will tell you that.”

  The irony was not lost on them. Between them, they had turned down LSU, Ohio State, and a host of other top programs to come to Penn State, in the hopes of having the same experience their fathers had: values over victories, unequaled camaraderie, and the pursuit of noble goals. But they didn’t truly start having that experience until the staff that coached their fathers had left.

  But they also knew the very values Paterno had instilled in their fathers—dedication, integrity, sacrifice—their fathers had instilled in them. Now they were relying on those same values to lead the team in Paterno’s absence. In a sense, they were the grandsons of Joe Paterno.

  How far those values could take them also depended on the new staff.

  “One of the biggest things they did for us was give us our confidence,” Zordich said about O’Brien and his assistants. “The relationships we have with our coaches—it’s only been six months—are nothing like we ever had before. I’ve never been closer to any team in my life than this one, this season. Once we’re playing, and playing well, a lot of this will be in the past.”

  Zordich was naturally focusing on his final season.

  O’Brien did not have that luxury. He had to take a longer view. Even if they survived this season, he knew harder ones would follow. But failing his first season would all but guarantee worse to come.

  For Penn State to outlast the NCAA’s four-year sanctions, succeeding in 2012 was utterly necessary, but not sufficient.

  • • •

  Saturday, September 1, 2012: The two-mile journey to Beaver Stadium from the Toftrees Resort, where the Lions spend Friday nights before the game, runs along two-lane roads, complete with a police escort with sirens blaring. This forces cars to pull over for the team’s famed blue buses to pass—but instead of being upset, the drivers were thrilled to see the blue caravan, honking their horns and giving fist pumps out their windows.

  The buses passed a handful of barns, dozens of hay wheels, and hundreds of cows—all of them owned by Penn State. Were it not for the people who rode these buses—who usually wore their headsets and bobbed their heads silently to music to get psyched up—that’s what Penn State would be today: a glorified cow college.

  A half mile from the stadium, the buses started passing tailgaters, who cheered and flashed handmade signs:

  WE ARE ONE.

  PRIDE.

  And a string of people holding up one letter each to spell W-E A-R-E P-E-N-N S-T-A-T-E.

  The energy built block by block. When the blue buses pulled up to the stadium tunnel, the band blasted the fight song, and several hundred fans packed the walkway and covered the grass embankments. At least a hundred of them waved navy-blue signs with white lettering that said YOU STAYED WITH US, while an equal number waved white signs with navy-blue lettering that said WE STAND WITH YOU.

  One player whispered, “Goose bumps.”

  • • •

  McGloin got off first, per O’Brien’s wishes.

  The cheering the players received was not just loud, but had a warmth to it, expressing as much appreciation as excitement. A few players put on their sunglasses to hide their shiny eyes as they walked through the crowd, then took them off when they entered the dark tunnel.

  They went directly to their stalls, where every single one of them stopped to stare at something no Penn State player had ever seen before: their jerseys hanging from the hooks with their names on the back. They gawked and ran their fingers over the letters, then took photos with their cell phones and sent them to family and friends.

  “Never thought I’d ever see this!” Mauti said.

  Mike Fuhrman put it another way: “Sweet as fuck!”

  This went on for a solid ten minutes. Whatever the lettermen, alumni, and fans thought about this break with tradition, the response among the players was unanimous. They loved it.

  They eventually returned to their normal routine of light stretching, shooting the breeze, and reading the game programs left in each stall. Flipping through his, Matt Lehman, who had made the team the previous spring during an all-campus tryout, said, “We’re, like, 0 and 130.”

  “What?”

  “Well, according to the NCAA, we haven’t won a game in twelve years.”

  • • •

  In the parking lot outside, and in the stands above, the fans were enjoying arguably their favorite hour of the week, tailgating and getting pumped up before a big game. But for the coaches in the locker room underneath them, it was the most agonizing hour of the week—and in this case, probably the year: waiting for the first game to begin. They alternated between forced small talk and silence.

  Mac McWhorter—one of three coaches on O’Brien’s staff who’d won a national title—looked calm. But, he admitted, “The jitters are on the inside.”

  O’Brien was the most visibly impatient, rapidly tapping his foot and doing nothing to hide it. Of course, if they lost, he’d be the one who would have to answer for it.

  Coach Stan Hixon, who had won a national title at LSU, was the calmest of the bunch, putting on his reading glasses to peruse the morning paper.

  “Did you have the French toast?” O’Brien asked his lieutenants, his foot still tapping away. “It was pretty good. The whole training table is pretty good.”

  A few nods, then more silence.

  “Steve, what time is it?” defensive coordinator Ted Roof asked.

  “Ten twenty.”

  “Sheesh,” Roof said. “The hands of time are standing still.”

  They stood up, sat down, put their baseball caps on, took them off, got some gum, chewed it for a minute, then spat it out. They went to the bathroom, washed their hands, drank
some water, and repeated as needed. They told stories, but they were only half listening—even to their own—with long silences between each one. Prisoners on death row, waiting for the governor’s call, are only slightly less anxious.

  “Been a long time since I played a noon game,” O’Brien said.

  “When you’re winning,” Roof said, “you play later.”

  “Even in the NFL,” O’Brien said. At New England “we were always on Sunday night, or Monday, or Thursdays. Never at noon.”

  “Same with the SEC,” Roof said, then added, with more than a little sarcasm, “That’s another place where the NCAA is so good about intervening on behalf of the welfare of the student-athletes. You play a night game on the road, you get home at five in the morning—then get up in a few hours and start the whole thing all over again. Why? Hey, wait a second! We can make a buck here!”

  The choir agreed, but more silence followed. There was nothing to add.

  “I think we need to get ’em to turn the AC down,” O’Brien said. “We could hang meat in here!”

  McWhorter looked up. “Sixty-five minutes? Shit—time’s creepin’ in here!”

  O’Brien loudly clasped his hands. Then he unclasped them. Then he clasped them again—and repeated the cycle. He finally lay down on the carpet to stretch his legs. “I just need to get ready to run for the introductions,” he said. “See how long that damn tunnel is?”

  For the first time, everyone laughed out loud.

  “With the lettermen lining the ropes and all, it’s a hundred yards! I’ll probably pull every hamstring in my legs. I just don’t want to trip—or have someone run over me, like fucking Hodges!”

  More nervous laughter, but the relief didn’t last. Silence returned.

  “You rush, rush, rush all week,” Roof said, “then it’s errrr,” imitating squealing brakes. “Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.”

  “First time I’ve coached in real pants in forever,” O’Brien said, referring to the khakis he was wearing instead of his usual sweatpants. “I think it’s pretty interesting Joe [Paterno] wore a tie. Woody, Bear, Landry, they all wore ties. I find the history of college football fascinating.”