Emotion Doesn’t Work for Penn State

Only one miracle a night. Adam Taliaferro walked into Beaver Stadium Saturday. He walked with a wobble. He listed a little left, then a little right, but did what he said he would do. He led the Penn State Nittany Lions out of the tunnel and into the 2001 football season.

Less than a year after lying on a a field, unable to move--and barely able to breathe after making a headfirst tackle, Taliaferro is the best story college football will have this year. He walked when everyone told him he wouldn’t. He waved his arms when 11 months ago he couldn’t wiggle a finger. This was the miracle.

Miami was the reality.

The Hurricanes, ranked No. 2 in the country, clobbered the Nittany Lions, 33-7. The score was 30-0 at halftime. The Nittany Lions received a standing ovation when their starting quarterback, Matt Senneca, completed his first pass of the game, for one yard, with 1:20 left in the second quarter. What happened after halftime didn’t matter. Joe Paterno could have tied Bear Bryant for most career coaching victories with 323 with a win, but instead the 26-point margin of defeat tied the worst performance ever by a Paterno-coached team at home.

And what a defeat. Beaver Stadium had a shiny, new expansion to show off. A record crowd of 109,313 saw Miami quarterback Ken Dorsey complete 20 of 27 passes for a career-high 344 yards and three touchdowns. Dorsey, a 6-foot-5, 210-pound junior from Orinda, Calif., stamped himself as a Heisman Trophy candidate. He was strong, accurate, almost disdainfully poised. He had several hours, it seemed, to make every read and complete every pass.

“We knew it was going to be an emotional night for them,” Dorsey said. “With the new stadium and with Adam coming out, the crowd was going to be a factor. It was up to us to play with some confidence and some poise.”

And some swagger.

The Hurricanes--under 53-year-old rookie Coach Larry Coker, the emergency replacement when Butch Davis left the team for the Cleveland Browns last winter--christened this new, improved stadium with some old,unimproved bad behavior. Among the 14 penalties (for 120 yards) were two unsportsmanlike-conduct 15-yarders, one when tailback Clinton Portis flipped a football into the stands and another for an illegal chop block

Miami was the swifter, smarter, stronger and more enthusiastic team. The Hurricanes outgained Penn State, 602 yards to 323. Dorsey and his receivers were playing pitch and catch against the slow-footed Penn State defense.

“We couldn’t catch up to them,” Nittany Lion cornerback Bryan Scott said.

The emotions of the early evening turned into a sullen parade of foul-mouthed, unhappy, discouraged fans pouring out of Beaver Stadium, starting at halftime. By game’s end, many were littering the parking lot with rolled-up programs and empty beer cans and were long gone by the time Penn State finally scored, with 9:51 left in the game and backups manning most of the Hurricane defensive positions. This evening had begun with the nave hope, here in Happy Valley, that the magic that had carried Taliaferro might rub off on his teammates.

On Sept. 23 last year, in a 45-6 Penn State loss at Ohio State (Paterno’s worst loss), Taliaferro, a promising freshman cornerback, an honors student, a young player who embodied all the old-fashioned qualities that Paterno looks for in football players, all the hard work and family values and straight-laced ideas about behaving humbly and playing passionately, mistimed his rush at Ohio State running back Jerry Westbrooks. Taliaferro went headfirst into Westbrooks’ thigh, so hard that Westbrooks had a deep bruise where Taliaferro’s helmet hit. Taliaferro lay on the Ohio Stadium turf for nearly 10 minutes as trainers and doctors begged him not to try to move his neck and then lay in a Columbus hospital as doctors told him and his family that three in 100 people with injuries such as his, a broken neck, recovered enough to walk.

The story of Taliaferro’s nine-month battle to prove all those doctors wrong is told in a book entitled “Miracle In The Making.” It was the theme of Saturday night because Taliaferro, who will never play football again, led his team into another season, a season that Taliaferro once thought might belong to him. Tears dropped from Taliaferro’s eyes and his hands trembled as he raised them to the crowd.

“It was just the culmination of everything that’s happened,” Taliaferro said afterward. “I’m just so thankful that I’ve had so many people support me.”

Miami did not choose to join in the support. The Hurricanes scored on their first five possessions and led 23-0 before they had to punt. The Nittany Lions had three first downs in the first half.

Paterno, 74 years old and looking it for the first time, walked off the field at halftime with his head down. What had seemed to be a triumphal march to Bryant’s record a couple of years ago has become a desultory slog, a sad 2000 season marked by Taliaferro’s injury and Paterno’s worst season ever, a 5-7 campaign that included an embarrassing 24-6 loss at home to Toledo now followed by this 2001 opening loss.

“We weren’t ready for that type of speed in the first half,” Paterno said. “We knew Miami was good. We knew we were going to have problems. But you can’t really prepare for that kind of speed. I think we’re going to be a good football team ... I really do.”

The words are brave, but the fact is that Penn State’s leading rusher, Omar Easy, gained 44 yards. Senneca, a junior career backup making his first start at quarterback, was one of seven for a yard and then, mercifully, he got his elbow bruised. The replacement, Zack Mills, a redshirt freshman, did throw a 44-yard touchdown pass to Bryant Johnson, but it was against the scrubs.

Coker, a soft-spoken career assistant coach, who still seems awestruck to be the head coach at Miami, chose his words carefully when describing the win.

“We beat a great football tradition,” Coker said. “We probably caught them at the right time.”

A football tradition, not a football team.

And the time was supposed to be right for the Nittany Lions. This was to be their night, their tradition, their coach making history, their inspirational hero bringing a team to life again.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Johnson said. “I feel like we let Adam down. We let ourselves down a little. Teams shouldn’t come here and beat us this way.”