The Lion in Autumn by Frank Fitzpatrick Page A

uphere?” But the long walks he likes are opportunities for contemplation, not nature loving.
    To the friendly, accommodating, slow-moving Pennsylvania German natives, the coach’s impatient, direct, argumentative nature—“excessively focused and serious” is how his late brother once described it—often seems grating, excessive, foreign.
    Paterno, as generations of players will tell you, is extremely verbal. Watch him on the sideline. As he roams nervously throughout games, his mouth rarely stops. He talks with and yells at whomever he happens to be near—assistant coaches, players, officials. Away from the field, he flatters and jokes with waitresses, fans, cops, neighbors, and parents. And he’s accumulated a sizable collection of stories that he’ll retell at the slightest provocation.
    One of the few times when anyone can recall the coach being silent for an extended period also marked the moment when he might have come closest to abandoning his profession.
    On a September 23, 1967, bus ride back from Annapolis, Maryland, Paterno arrived at a psychological crossroads. After just eleven games as the Nittany Lions’ head coach, all the plans and dreams he had formulated in sixteen seasons as Rip Engle’s assistant were evaporating in a haze of mediocrity. His best coaching attributes—competitiveness, a fierce drive, a need to excel—had turned inward and were devouring him.
    Normally, during long postgame journeys, he would rehash the game with the other coaches. That day, his hair disheveled, his mood sour, Paterno stared aimlessly out a window near the front of the bus for most of the 150-mile trip. What provoked the gloomy silence was the team’s 23–22 loss to Navy earlier that Saturday. Paterno had been embarrassed. “The shabbiest game I’d ever been a part of,” he later called it.
    With fifty-seven seconds left in the Nittany Lions’ season opener at Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, Midshipman Rob Taylor had caught a 16-yard touchdown pass. Taylor’s catch was his school-record tenth of the game. Penn State’s defense had surrendered 489 yards to smaller, less-talented opponents.
    Paterno’s record as head coach was 5–6. Maybe he had made amistake. Maybe he should have listened to his parents and gone to law school. Maybe he didn’t belong at Penn State.
    â€œI was having my doubts,” said Paterno of that trip. “We were terrible.”
    Back in Pennsylvania, there had been some grumbling. Fans moaned about Paterno, questioned his credentials. He had never been a head coach before and it showed. He had come in with a bunch of big ideas and lots of talk. But where were the results? Look at what happened when the Nittany Lions played the big boys in 1966. They had lost to Michigan State, 42–8; to UCLA, 49–11; and to Georgia Tech, 21–0. Now 1967 had begun with a loss to Navy. Maybe he wasn’t the right man for the job. Maybe he was meant to be an assistant.
    His players weren’t thrilled either. Dennis Onkotz, one of a talented group of sophomores Paterno had recruited before his first year, wondered why he and the rest of the outstandng defenders from the previous season’s freshmen team stayed on the bench while Navy rolled up close to 500 yards. Cocaptain Bill Lenkaitis said those early players “weren’t real crazy” about Paterno’s perfectionist demands. “If he didn’t like the way we were practicing,” said Lenkaitis, “he’d make us start practice over.”
    The practices that followed the loss at Navy were painful—particularly for some of the upperclassmen. Paterno, it turned out, was thinking like Onkotz. In the silence of that bus ride from Annapolis, he had rejected the thought of quitting and instead formulated a strategy. He was going to put aside his penchant for playing upperclassmen and turn to his younger, more