him “Hap,” was thrown off the team briefly for breaking curfew. This might not be worth noting—football players get thrown off teams all the time for breaking curfew—but in Rowe’s case he was out late on the night after a game. Coaches rarely even have curfews the night after a game. And Rowe was spending that time with his new wife.
“Interestingly, I carried being thrown off the team through my thirteen years in the NFL,” Rowe said. “In the pros, I never broke a rule. I know that sounds unbelievable, but I remember how devastated I was when I was thrown off and realized how much football meant to me.”
Then again, not everyone remembered Paterno as a tyrant in that first year. Mike Irwin, who was co-captain of that team and later coached under Paterno, remembered that Paterno had actually gotten too loose and mellow and had lost the fire that made him such a force as an assistant coach.
Either way, the larger point remains: Paterno was not himself thatfirst year. His style was unformed. The assistant coach who always believed he was right turned spectacularly indecisive as a head coach. He changed the offense from Rip Engle’s Wing-T—the offense Paterno had led at Brown, the offense that had brought him to State College in the first place—to the more modern I formation, where two running backs line up behind the quarterback as if waiting in a line for coffee. He then changed back. He switched quarterbacks. One minute he seemed eager to prove that he was not at all like Engle, and when that felt wrong he tried to be more understanding and calm, and when that felt wrong he switched again.
Penn State did win Paterno’s first game against Maryland, but it was such a miserable performance by both teams that the Maryland coach, a character named Lou Saban, did not even show up for the traditional postgame handshake. Saban called two days later to semi-apologize. “Ah, I shoulda shook your hand,” Paterno would remember him saying, “but you guys stunk so bad, we stunk worse, it just didn’t seem right to shake hands about it.”
Paterno didn’t disagree. The next week, his team was destroyed 42–8 by the top-ranked team in the country, Michigan State. That told Paterno how far away his team was from greatness. The week after that, Penn State lost to Army 11–0. That told Penn State fans how far his team was from even being good.
“After that Army game, you wouldn’t believe some of the letters I got,” Paterno said. “In all the years I was at Penn State, I would say some of the most vicious letters I got were in that first year after we got shut out against Army.” His first thought was that he could somehow joke people out of their rage—that was how arguments were handled on the streets of Brooklyn. But this was a different level of anger than he had ever endured. People called Paterno’s home (his number was listed, and would remain listed throughout his life) and screamed at Sue. A doctor in East Stroudsburg sent letters filled with such contempt that Paterno would remember them for the rest of his life. “Oh, I knew enough even then not to worry about what people said. But I wouldn’t be entirely truthful if I didn’t add that itwas a bit eye-opening. Here it was, I had only coached three games, and people had decided I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe they were right, but it wasn’t like we had been a great team the year or two before.”
Two weeks after the Army debacle, Paterno decided to entirely change his team’s defense in an effort to stop a talented UCLA offense featuring a future Heisman Trophy winner, quarterback Gary Beban. This move foreshadowed what would be a Paterno trademark: his willingness to start over and do whatever was necessary strategically to win. But it would also demonstrate just how raw he was as a coach, that he didn’t yet understand his own limitations. The staff was still trying to teach the players the new defense on Friday, the day before
“Interestingly, I carried being thrown off the team through my thirteen years in the NFL,” Rowe said. “In the pros, I never broke a rule. I know that sounds unbelievable, but I remember how devastated I was when I was thrown off and realized how much football meant to me.”
Then again, not everyone remembered Paterno as a tyrant in that first year. Mike Irwin, who was co-captain of that team and later coached under Paterno, remembered that Paterno had actually gotten too loose and mellow and had lost the fire that made him such a force as an assistant coach.
Either way, the larger point remains: Paterno was not himself thatfirst year. His style was unformed. The assistant coach who always believed he was right turned spectacularly indecisive as a head coach. He changed the offense from Rip Engle’s Wing-T—the offense Paterno had led at Brown, the offense that had brought him to State College in the first place—to the more modern I formation, where two running backs line up behind the quarterback as if waiting in a line for coffee. He then changed back. He switched quarterbacks. One minute he seemed eager to prove that he was not at all like Engle, and when that felt wrong he tried to be more understanding and calm, and when that felt wrong he switched again.
Penn State did win Paterno’s first game against Maryland, but it was such a miserable performance by both teams that the Maryland coach, a character named Lou Saban, did not even show up for the traditional postgame handshake. Saban called two days later to semi-apologize. “Ah, I shoulda shook your hand,” Paterno would remember him saying, “but you guys stunk so bad, we stunk worse, it just didn’t seem right to shake hands about it.”
Paterno didn’t disagree. The next week, his team was destroyed 42–8 by the top-ranked team in the country, Michigan State. That told Paterno how far away his team was from greatness. The week after that, Penn State lost to Army 11–0. That told Penn State fans how far his team was from even being good.
“After that Army game, you wouldn’t believe some of the letters I got,” Paterno said. “In all the years I was at Penn State, I would say some of the most vicious letters I got were in that first year after we got shut out against Army.” His first thought was that he could somehow joke people out of their rage—that was how arguments were handled on the streets of Brooklyn. But this was a different level of anger than he had ever endured. People called Paterno’s home (his number was listed, and would remain listed throughout his life) and screamed at Sue. A doctor in East Stroudsburg sent letters filled with such contempt that Paterno would remember them for the rest of his life. “Oh, I knew enough even then not to worry about what people said. But I wouldn’t be entirely truthful if I didn’t add that itwas a bit eye-opening. Here it was, I had only coached three games, and people had decided I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe they were right, but it wasn’t like we had been a great team the year or two before.”
Two weeks after the Army debacle, Paterno decided to entirely change his team’s defense in an effort to stop a talented UCLA offense featuring a future Heisman Trophy winner, quarterback Gary Beban. This move foreshadowed what would be a Paterno trademark: his willingness to start over and do whatever was necessary strategically to win. But it would also demonstrate just how raw he was as a coach, that he didn’t yet understand his own limitations. The staff was still trying to teach the players the new defense on Friday, the day before
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