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

by Bacon, John U.

  More silence.

  “Getting off the buses—how great was that?” O’Brien asked. A few coaches had already run to the field to work with their position groups. The remaining coaches nodded. “That’s one thing you don’t get with pro football. I love the band! Got that from my mom. Four-hundred-piece band? Can’t beat that!”

  A minute later, O’Brien looked up at the digital clock with the big red numbers again.

  He had made it. It was time.

  He put on his hat and headed out for the first warm-ups of his head-coaching career.

  • • •

  Beaver Stadium is the only venue in the Big Ten where the fans see the players between the locker room and the tunnel. Lions fans take full advantage, waiting for an hour under the stands, forty deep on both sides of the walkway, to scream and yell their support, which echoes under the concrete stands. The players act cool, just as they do walking off the buses, but it clearly gives them a jolt.

  On O’Brien’s way back to the locker room after warm-ups, a few dozen lettermen stopped him to give him handshakes and man-hugs. Jay Paterno stood among them, near the locker room, wearing a light-blue shirt and a tie, just like his father had for so many Saturdays. He gave O’Brien a friendly handshake, but then yelled for McGloin, who turned around and smiled, but their hug seemed to mean less to McGloin than to Paterno, who turned away, choked up.

  Back in the locker room, O’Brien had switched to his normal coaching mode. His time in purgatory had finally ended.

  Just a minute before it was time to take the field, O’Brien told his team, “The last eight months you have put in the time and the effort like no other team I’ve ever been around. You deserve to win today.

  “We’re not going to be perfect, and that’s okay. Play the next play! Play the next play! Play hard. Play fast.

  “Encourage your teammates—and let’s fucking go!”

  “Yeah!” the players yelled, snapping their helmets and walking behind their leader.

  This was no spring game.

  • • •

  The fans under the stands were loud during warm-ups, and louder still right before kickoff—as loud and crazy as any I’ve seen.

  From the dark reaches under the stadium, the players walked toward sunlight. At the end of the tunnel, the ushers slowly swung open the huge wrought-iron gates to the field. The players rushed past the cameramen, the band, and the cheerleaders, through a path lined by young varsity athletes and aging football lettermen.

  O’Brien was right: the entire run was close to a hundred yards. But he didn’t pull a hamstring or trip, and Gerald Hodges didn’t fall over him.

  The cheering was not just loud, but sustained. The fans had been waiting for this moment for ten months. They longed for it every time their school absorbed another blow, which seemed to arrive daily. They needed this.

  This was football. This was their team. There would be no investigations or news reports today, or any need to criticize or defend their alma mater. Just a bunch of college kids running out onto the grass in their famed midnight-blue jerseys, with the stark white numbers—and, for the first time, their names on the back.

  • • •

  Ohio won the coin toss and elected to defer—which, actually, was just what Penn State wanted. The idea was simple: Don’t waste any time. Drive the ball down there, get some points, and get the crowd going.

  On this day, that wouldn’t take much.

  The Lions could only return the opening kickoff to their own 12—and even that was enough to solicit a hearty cheer.

  From there, Bill Belton ran for 8 yards, and McGloin hit Allen Robinson for 6 more—and the first first-down of the brand-new season. They kept rolling right up to Ohio’s 49-yard line, where they faced fourth and 2. For sixty-two years, Rip Engle and Joe Paterno would never have given a thought to doing anything other than punting.

  O’Brien never gave a thought to doing anything other than going for it—which brought another cheer from the crowd. Penn State’s defense stood ready to go, helmets on, in case the offense came up short.

  McGloin took the shotgun snap—even more surprising on fourth and 2—then hit his man, who gained 9 yards.

  The defensive players nodded vigorously. “All right! All right!”

  If that’s what the new era of Penn State football was going to look like, that was okay with the defense, and the fans.

  The sun was out, the place was packed, and the Lions were driving, just like old times. The offense was headed to the end zone—and the first morsel of good news in almost a year. A touchdown would hardly solve their problems—past, present, and future, with the tragedy still hanging overhead, the sanctions setting in, and the endless court cases to follow—but it would provide a scrap of salvation.

  McGloin handed off to Belton—Silas Redd’s replacement, converted from receiver—who cut through the Ohio line for a decent gain, until the Bobcats stripped the ball, just as O’Brien had warned they would.

  The Bobcats recovered the ball on their 21-yard line. Penn State’s first drive was over.

  But everyone knew Penn State’s strength was defense. Mauti stopped their first play for 4 yards, then, on third and 1 at Ohio’s 30-yard line, he fought past his blocker to stuff the runner, short of the first down. He jumped up and punched the air, screaming—which sent the crowd into a frenzy.

  Late in the first quarter, McGloin took the snap on first and goal from Ohio’s 6-yard line. He dropped back, looked around, and started scrambling. One of the lettermen standing on the sideline couldn’t help himself: “Throw it away! Throw it away!”

  McGloin probably should have, but instead he found Belton, who finished the easy trip to the end zone.

  Touchdown! Penn State, 7–0.

  O’Brien, who’d been working hundred-hour weeks for several months, did not resemble his famously stolid mentor Bill Belichick. O’Brien’s reaction was that of a first-year Pennsylvania high school coach, jumping up and down, patting his players’ helmets and backs and yelling at everyone coming back to the sideline. He was holding nothing back. He loved them, and they loved him back.

  In the stands, fans who were wearing T-shirts proclaiming STILL LOUD, STILL PROUD were just that, giving a full-throated defense of their university for the first time in ten months.

  They launched into their trademark cheer: “We are . . . Penn State!”—repeating it at least twenty times, as if they needed the opening touchdown as an excuse to reassert that simple declaration.

  Neither team could get much traction the rest of the half. After the Bobcats suffered another three-and-out, they set up to punt from their own 25. But the Lions rushed in, blocked it, and three plays later, McGloin found walk-on Matt Lehman with a pass in the right flat. Lehman clutched the ball as he turned upfield, rumbling as only a tight end can through a handful of Bobcat defenders, all the way to the end zone. It was Penn State’s second touchdown of the O’Brien Era—and the first of Lehman’s career.

  When the half ended, 14–3, the players trotted back up the tunnel, which was lined with so many students in T-shirts hanging over the rail it looked as if the players were running into a white cloud.

  • • •

  The stadium was rocking, but the locker room was all business.

  “How much time?” O’Brien asked his coaches, to start his first halftime as Penn State’s head coach.

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Let’s decide what to run on the first play of the second half,” he said. “They haven’t stopped NASCAR yet,” the code name for their no-huddle offense.

  “They’re sucking air out there,” Mac said of the Bobcat defenders. “If we can get farther ahead, I wouldn’t mind running the two-minute drill on them, to put the nail in the coffin.”

  O’Brien nodded. “I think we need to throw one up on them, Stan.”

  “I agree,” Hixon said.

  They separated the offense and the defense into two classrooms, which looked a li
ttle silly with three-hundred-pound men in full uniform sitting in rows of school chairs. In the defense’s room, Ted Roof drew a huge 0 above the word TAKEAWAYS. They had not created a turnover yet, which obviously did not please Coach Roof.

  O’Brien started with the offense. “We need to get rid of this mentality: I don’t want you to be cocky, but you gotta realize, we’re good! We’re better than they are! In my opinion we should have put twenty-eight points on these guys that half. We’re just stopping ourselves with third downs and turnovers!

  “Play with confidence!

  “Remember this word: finish! I don’t give a damn what happened in the past. We’re here now! You’re here now!”

  • • •

  The Bobcats took the kickoff to start the second half and worked their way to Penn State’s 43-yard line. From there, on third and 7, Tettleton dropped back, saw his receiver over the middle, and fired.

  Tettleton apparently didn’t see safety Stephen Obeng-Agyapong, gliding right into position to make the interception, nor Penn State’s Malcolm Willis, right behind Obeng, already camped out to make a virtual “fair catch” on the same pass. If Obeng could make the catch—for Penn State’s first takeaway of the season—he had plenty of grass in front of him, and few Bobcats, presenting him a good chance to complete the “pick six” that would give his team a 21–3 lead, and enough momentum to finish the game the way O’Brien had instructed.

  But the ball bounced through Obeng’s hands, high enough to float over Willis and right into the hands of Ohio’s Landon Smith, who jogged to the end zone.

  Instead of 21–3, the scoreboard read 14–10, and the game was on.

  Penn State’s players were as resilient as any in the country. They’d already proven that. But self-reliance and self-assurance are not the same things. Their confidence was fragile—and that’s what the Bobcats attacked in the second half.

  First games can set the tone for a successful season—or a disappointing one. That kind of pressure exposes cracks that enthusiasm, camaraderie, and determination cannot cover.

  From that point forward, Penn State’s offense exhibited a surprising inability to convert third downs—with McGloin missing simple passes, and the receivers dropping too many of the accurate ones—and Penn State’s defense displayed an equally surprising inability to stop the Bobcats on third downs. Penn State’s coverage was generally quite good, but Tettleton revealed himself to be the quarterback they thought he was, eluding near sacks time and again, then putting the ball exactly where it needed to be for his receivers—who never seemed to drop the ball.

  That’s how the Bobcats scored again—and again—giving them three unanswered second-half touchdowns to take a 24–14 lead with 2:55 left in the game.

  “C’mon, guys!” a fan pleaded, leaning over the rail. “Let’s gooooo!”

  A few thousand had left, but most had stayed, reduced to begging for something good to happen. Another McGloin interception sent a few thousand more to the exits, but with the seconds ticking down, the student section revived, bursting into another round of “We Are! Penn State!” After the game ended, they repeated it endlessly, while the players and coaches trundled up the tunnel, heads down.

  The fans, at least, were not giving up.

  • • •

  The players took off their uniforms and pads, some almost violently. There followed one of the saddest sounds in sports: the hiss of the showers. In a losing locker room, that is what you hear.

  The assistants and players had completed their duties for the day. But for O’Brien, the second-worst part of the week, right behind the hour before the game, had arrived: facing the press. He was calm throughout, hunched over, giving straight, clipped answers. He probably said, “I have to coach better, and that starts tomorrow,” a half dozen times. He was blaming no one but himself.

  An hour after the game ended, O’Brien finally returned to the largely empty locker room, where Spider and Kirk Diehl were still working. O’Brien walked past the few assistants still getting dressed, straight into his rarely used head coach’s room. With the door open, he slumped in the big chair, then threw a few things around.

  Boom! Crash! Bang!

  The sound of losing was the same in every locker room in America.

  He grabbed a stat packet, revealing the source of his discontent. Seventy plays for Penn State’s offense, for 352 yards. Well, he expected that. Not bad, but they had a long way to go. But 88 plays for Ohio, for 499 yards? Penn State’s defense hadn’t been able to stop the unranked Bobcats. O’Brien muttered a few curses, then whipped the pages against the wall.

  He had good reason. On their home turf, against a team from the middling Mid-American Conference, on a perfectly dry, calm day, Penn State had been beaten, fair and square.

  That was bad enough. But looking ahead, he had to wonder: if they couldn’t beat these guys—under ideal conditions, in front of a hungry home crowd—who could they beat?

  How many losses could these players—who had already put the whole school on their shoulders—withstand, before they finally cracked?

  CHAPTER 9

  PAIN AT THE PLEASURE DOME

  September 1, 2012: While Penn State’s misery deepened, the rest of the Big Ten managed to win their opening games that afternoon. Most of them were warm-up wins over tackling dummies like Indiana State and Southern Mississippi, but even at that, Iowa had to come back from a 17–9 deficit to squeak by Northern Illinois, 18–17, and Wisconsin had to hang on for dear life against Northern Iowa, 26–21.

  True, it looked like Urban Meyer was bringing the Buckeyes back to form quite quickly in his debut, a 56–10 smackdown of Miami of Ohio. Michigan State played the Big Ten’s only ranked opponent, No. 24 Boise State, and won, 17–13. And the Wildcats gave early notice that they warranted the league’s attention by pulling off a win against Syracuse, the only BCS team on the Big Ten slate that afternoon, in a 42–41 overtime victory.

  But when it came to the central question—did the Big Ten still belong among the big boys?—opening day didn’t offer much evidence either way until the contest everyone wanted to see started at 7:12 central daylight time: second-ranked Alabama, the returning national champions, against eighth-ranked Michigan, the Big Ten’s Great White Hope.

  Whatever national reporters weren’t in State College that day were in Dallas, and with good reason.

  • • •

  Throughout the summer of 2012, I constantly heard one question: “Are you going down to Dallas?”

  Behind the repeated query were a few unstated assumptions: hard-core Michigan fans expect to go to all the big games, and they expect all fellow followers of the Wolverines to do so, too; their optimism for the Wolverines—and by proxy, the Big Ten—had overcome their doubts; and, hey, it promised to be a hell of a show, and who doesn’t like to see a good show?

  Most of the Alabama fans drove nine hours across I-20 from Tuscaloosa to Dallas that day, though Tide fans in one row of Section 101 had come from North Carolina, St. Louis, and Alberta, Canada.

  Most Michigan backers flew down, but those who drove split their twenty-hour drive by stopping over in Memphis or St. Louis. Many arrived a day early to take a tour of the shiny new Cowboys Stadium, one of the rare stages impressive enough to become part of the show.

  • • •

  Because it was just 1971 when the Cowboys moved into their last home—the famed Texas Stadium, with the rectangular hole cut in the roof so “God can watch his team play,” as the fans claimed—you might think the Cowboys wouldn’t need another one anytime soon. But you’d be wrong.

  According to Rutgers University’s Judith Grant Long, the United States is home to ninety-nine major league baseball, football, basketball, and hockey rinks, arenas, parks, and stadiums. The teams that play in those places have received taxpayer subsidies totaling $21.3 billion. That’s billion, with a b—and only two of those stadiums even made a profit.

  The taxpayers’ willingness to pay those subs
idies—or vote for their representatives who do—helps explain why eighty-nine of those ninety-nine stadiums have been built since 1970, including Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium, Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, and Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. All three have already been demolished and replaced, this time with two stadiums each, one for football and one for baseball. That marks nine new stadiums for those three cities alone in the past four decades—and well over one hundred major league stadiums nationwide. And we’re not done.

  Americans—and only Americans—have entered the era of the disposable stadium.

  It doesn’t have to be this way. And in Canada, it isn’t. Canada is home to six NHL teams, one NBA team, and one Major League Baseball team. But Canadians don’t pay for their stadiums. The teams do, which makes sense. Canadian taxpayers instead pay for their schools, which also makes sense. Guess whose students rank third, fifth, and fifth in reading, math, and science, respectively, and whose rank fourteenth, twenty-fifth, and seventeenth?

  Taking candy from a baby may be immoral, but taking money from students and giving it to millionaire athletes and billionaire franchise owners should be illegal. The critics of big-time college sports have plenty of easy targets, but those who think college sports should function more like the pros are severely overestimating the sanity of the latter.

  The phenomenon of disposable, taxpayer-funded stadiums is not only foreign to foreigners, but also to American college football fans. Beyond the considerable benefit of being a tax-exempt educational entity, the University of Michigan—like all universities—does not ask taxpayers to pay for its stadiums. You never hear about any college team holding the local taxpayers hostage by threatening to leave for Nashville or Jacksonville if they don’t build the school a new stadium. Which is just one more thing that separates college football from the pros—for now.

  • • •

  The firewall that previous generations of athletic directors have built and maintained to protect college sports from being overrun by the professional leagues—by, for example, prohibiting the Chicago Bears from renting Northwestern’s stadium, which the Big Ten feared would blur the lines between pro and college football—seems to be eroding, and fast, based on the display in Dallas that day.