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101 pages

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With each win, the victory bell rings for Penn State football. Ring The Bell captures the 22 greatest victories of the past four decades--remembering the greatest players, reliving the greatest plays, recalling the greatest opponents. The stories you've heard told and the stories you've shared with others all can be found in this one thrilling volume of Penn State history.

Sujets

USA

Fútbol americano

American football

États-Unis

Informations

Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	23 juin 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781622870110
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Ring The Bell
The Twenty-Two Greatest
Penn State Football
Victories of Our Lives

Ryan J. Murphy
Copyright 2012 by Ryan J. Murphy

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
June 2012
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ISBN 9781622870110

ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r .

To contact Ryan Murphy:
Email—rhmurphy@aimint.net
Blog—strangersinkenya.blogspot.com
Facebook—www.facebook.com/africamurphy

Cover photo: iStockPhoto
Cover design: Gregg Kulick

First printing, May 2012

Informational sources primarily from Wikipedia and TotalFootballStats.com.

ISBN 978-1-62287-010-3 (PRINT)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012939673

FATHER’S PRESS, LLC (PRINT)
Lee’s Summit, MO
(816) 600-6288
www.fatherspress.com
Email—mike@fatherspress.com
Table of Contents

Introduction: “The Games of Our Lives”

-CHAPTER 1 - 1977 Arizona State
-CHAPTER 2 - 1978 Maryland
-CHAPTER 3 - 1981 Pittsburgh
-CHAPTER 4 - 1982 Nebraska
-CHAPTER 5 - 1982 Georgia
-CHAPTER 6 - 1986 Miami
-CHAPTER 7 - 1989 BYU
-CHAPTER 8 - 1990 Notre Dame
-CHAPTER 9 - 1991 Tennessee
-CHAPTER 10 - 1993 Michigan State
-CHAPTER 11 - 1994 Illinois
-CHAPTER 12 - 1994 Oregon
-CHAPTER 13 - 1996 Texas
-CHAPTER 14 - 1997 Ohio State
-CHAPTER 15 - 1999 Miami
-CHAPTER 16 - 2001 Ohio State
-CHAPTER 17 - 2002 Nebraska
-CHAPTER 18 - 2005 Florida State
-CHAPTER 19 - 2008 Michigan
-CHAPTER 20 - 2009 LSU
-CHAPTER 21 - 2010 Northwestern
-CHAPTER 22 - 2011 Ohio State
Dedication
Rick Murphy, Bob Strobeck, Sherwin Crumley, Bill Krouse, Matt Espenshade, and Andy Warntz— treasured men who have shared friendship, faith, and football.
INTRODUCTION
“The Games of Our Lives”
When picking up this book, the first question that needs answering comes from the title. If this book covers the greatest Penn State wins of our generation, who are “we”?
We are the fans who mark the moments of our lives by Penn State football. We are the ones who waited for a national title, and then waited for our next national title, and now still wait for our next national title. We are the family members who consider Penn State Saturday some of our best family moments ever. We are the storytellers who sometimes can’t tell where our lives end and where Penn State football begins.

We are Penn State.
This book will start with 1977, the year of my birth, and rush right into your living room last winter. Some of my earliest memories are Penn State memories growing up in the Susquehanna Valley, long before I knew what a play-action pass or a corner blitz were. But there are other good reasons to start there.
I start there because 1977 is close to the time when football began to explode into the national television phenomenon it is today. The regionalism of college football’s early days was fading, and (chronologically near the dawn of ESPN in 1979) fans could weekly experience California passing attacks or Midwestern wishbone offenses.
I start there because every good story has a beginning, and you can’t talk about Penn State’s first national championship game (against Alabama in 1978) without talking about the team before the ‘78 squad. And the dominance of Penn State’s late-seventies teams led directly to the excellence of the championship units of the early 1980’s.
Starting with 1966 might seem like a good place to start. But the Paterno years started before my generation. Heck, it began before many of the Nittany Lion fans of today’s generation. That’s part of the one-of-a-kind uniqueness of JoePa. While Paterno’s remarkable head coaching run at PSU was stuff of legend, what is often overlooked is that Paterno was an assistant coach at Penn State sixteen years before he took over! That in itself is remarkable in today’s coaching climate. Tacking on 40-plus years to that kind of run as an assistant is unheard of.
Engle headed some great Penn State teams—most notably the 1959-1962 stretch that included three bowl wins and four top-20 finishes—but it would be Paterno who would take Penn State to the heights of modern college football. After a 5-5 rookie season in ‘66 and a slow start in ‘67, new head coach Paterno got his team on track and put together a stellar string of 31 games without a loss.
By 1969, the nation noticed what Penn State had going on up in State College, and many considered Penn State the best in the country. However, President Richard Nixon anointed the University of Texas the national champion, and this seemed to have swayed enough voters towards the Longhorns. Penn State finished No. 2 after an Orange Bowl victory over No. 6 Missouri, which prompted Paterno to quip, “I’d like to know how the president could know so little about Watergate in 1973 and so much about college football in 1969?”
The 1970 squad needed to rebuild a bit, but ‘71-‘75 featured five straight top-10 AP finishes, an undefeated team in 1973, and Penn State’s first and only Heisman Trophy winner, John Cappelletti, also in ‘73. (Cappelletti’s #22 inspired the number of games selected for this book, as did Penn State’s all-time rushing leader, Evan Royster—another memorable #22.) After such a strong run, PSU had a down year in 1976 but gained valuable experience against a tough schedule (two top-5 teams, four top-20 teams).

Which brings us to 1977.
Granted, I didn’t have too many memories of the ‘77 season, but I can guarantee that my dad changed some diapers with one eye on the TV screen that year. I hope I helped ease my parents out of their post-New Year’s malaise in 1979 with my chubby cheeks and balanced perspective on the Alabama loss (story retold in Chapter 2). And I’m sure I enjoyed the laughter around the living room in 1981 as Penn State reeled off 48 straight points against rival Pittsburgh (relive this game in Chapter 3).
But my first actual memory was a foam hand that read “Penn State #1.” My mom, a part-time waitress as she finished her nursing degree, worked the night of the 1983 Sugar Bowl and probably made killer tips from the exuberant and celebratory Nittany Lions fans. (Read about this game in Chapter 4.) More important than the money to a five-year-old, however, was the blue, team spirit merchandise. I remember thinking that this “Penn State” entity must be pretty amazing if someone made a foam finger bigger than my entire upper body to honor it.
My appreciation for football grew after that through piano playing (which earlier Penn State gridiron legend and acclaimed musician Mike Reid would have appreciated). While I was mildly interested in tickling the ivories, my piano teacher’s husband saved his old Sports Illustrated magazines and bequeathed them to me on lesson days. I remember mimicking out in the yard the images on those pages and the moves I saw as Dad watched the tube on the weekends. I couldn’t sit for a three-hour game, so bouncing outside for personal re-enactments made the afternoons more pleasurable for me.
Football was getting into my blood. It wasn’t until January 2, 1987 that football stole my heart.
The hype for the Penn State/Miami national championship game reached epic proportions in South Central Pennsylvania leading up to the game. The storyline was simple enough for a nine-year-old. Penn State was good and wholesome and everything Mom and Dad taught you to be; Miami was evil and corrupt and everything Mom and Dad taught you not to be. The fact that Penn State was the hometown team coupled the feverish desire for a win snugly with the desire for moral victory. You can read the rest of this story in Chapter 6, but suffice it to say that D.J. Dozier running the ball past the goal line for the game-winning touchdown brought forth something from my eyes I had never before experienced—tears of joy.
Throughout my life, I’d experience this again. Winning a basketball championship, marrying the love of my life, witnessing the birth of my three children—all memorable moments. But the 1986 championship game was my first. Penn State was in my heart.
I wrote this book for people like me, people who recall weddings and Nittany Lion wins with the same exuberance. Or funerals and PSU losses with the same melancholy. We are the ones who can remember where we were and who we were with for the greatest moments in Penn State history. And those memories are every bit as important to us as the game itself because PSU football is about being with friends and families as much as it is about a ball game.
While this book might have its roots in the way my parents and their relatives raised me, I hope it takes wings in the hands of my children. This is a history book more than anything, and Penn State’s proud tradition is full of legendary players and coaches who made the moments happen. Their stories are lost and forgotten if not told again and again from one fan to another, passed down from one generation to the next.
These are the greatest moments of our generation, and we should celebrate who we were, even as we cheer and hope for what we will be. Enjoy the vintage memories, enjoy the magical moments, enjoy the heroic players, enjoy the formidable foes, and enjoy the resurrected adrenaline. They are ours forever.

CRITERIA
What criteria went into the selection of my top twenty-two games of our generation? There are too many to count.
In some cases a victory meant a championship, either over the entire nation or over the Big Ten. Sometimes a victory meant a milestone, or sometimes a much-needed morale boost.