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Short in elite company as consensus All-American 2 0 1 8 S E A S O N P R E V I E W Penn State lists 86 players as >rst- team All-Americans, but only 39 are consensus All-Americans in the NCAA's o@cial records. Brandon Short and eight other linebackers are among them. So are nine defensive linemen and eight running backs. Yet, it's not that simple. Penn State actually has 10 linebackers on the list counting the school's original >rst-team All-American in 1906, William "Mother" Dunn, who was named as a center but was a linebacker on defense. Saquon Barkley is the latest consensus All-American but not as a running back. He was named as an all- purpose player, a position created in 1999 and selected infrequently since then. In the 2018 NCAA record book, Penn State o@cially has 42 consensus All- Americans. That's because three players are counted twice aAer being chosen two times: linebackers Dennis Onkotz (1968-69) and Paul Posluszny (2005- 06) and defensive lineman Bruce Clark (1978-79). According to the NCAA, "The [con- sensus] roster consists of only those players who were >rst-team selections on one or more of the All-America teams that were selected for the national audi- ence and received nationwide circula- tion." Twenty-two such organizations have been used over the decades, with the picks of The Associated Press since 1925 and the coaches since 1945, under the banner of di?erent media sponsors, still among the mainstays. From the NCAA's >rst consensus team in 1889 until 1965, only 11 men were so honored annually. In 1966, an 11-man defensive squad was added. Place kick- ers and punters didn't show up until the late 1970s. Another pertinent factor that lasted from 1889 until 1965 was that only >ve positions were designated: end, tackle, guard, center and back. The nomencla- ture hardly changed when the defensive team was added in 1966 with a nearly identical classi>cation for the line and secondary, the addition of linebackers and the replacement of the center with a middle guard. Then in 1970, the o?ensive back>eld split into a quarterback and running backs. That's why Penn State's Hall of Fame quarterback Richie Lucas, who >nished second in the Heisman race in 1959, is o@cially just a "B," not as "QB," in the NCAA archives. In 1972, tight ends and wide receivers were designated on o?ense, and the next year the speci>c positions for the defen- sive line were simply "DL." From that point on, the speci>c posi- tions began to occasionally vary over the decades and more than 11 were picked for each squad. Tony Franklin of Texas A&M was the pioneering place kicker in 1976, Jim Miller of Mississippi State the >rst punter in 1979, David Palmer of Al- abama the initial kick returner in 1993 and Dennis Northcutt of Arizona the original all-purpose player in 1999. The 1999 season was the only one in which Penn State had three consensus All-Americans in one year: Short, line- backer LaVar Arrington and defensive end Courtney Brown. They were part of an outstanding defense that stymied Northcutt in a short-lived special event preseason game, the Pigskin Classic. Northcutt was Arizona's record-setting senior wide receiver when the preseason No. 3 Wildcats played the No. 4 Nittany Lions at Beaver Stadium. He had eight receptions for 89 yards and two punt re- turns for 39 yards but no touchdowns, as Penn State thrashed Arizona, 41-7. Three consensus All-Americans are almost al- ways better than one. –L.P. what overshadowed by teammate LaVar Arrington. They were both finalists for the Butkus Award, which is given to the nation's outstanding linebacker, and Ar- rington won it. Yet, it was Short's leader- ship that endeared him to his teammates. "He's like the daddy of the team," free safety James Boyd once told reporters. "He makes sure no one goes out and does anything stupid." One illustration of Short's unusual style of leadership is a tradition he started early in 1999 when Penn State's board of trustees was getting a tour of the locker room in the Lasch Building. A new blue carpet had been installed with a large space bearing the school's "S" logo lo- cated near Short's locker close to the training room. "The trustees were walking through, including a couple of elderly people using canes, and some of them stepped on the logo," former equipment manager Spider Caldwell recalled. "Brandon started yelling at them in a joking way, like, 'Hey, you can't walk on that. That's our team symbol. We're going to start a new tradi- tion.' And he did. After that, if anyone walked on that logo, they had to do a bunch of pushups. I remember recruits walking on the logo and some didn't like being told they had to do pushups. But if they did the pushups, you knew they would be good teammates. That went on for several years after Brandon left, but it's all gone now with the renovations in Lasch." Short led the team in tackles in his jun- ior and senior years, and when he gradu- ated he was sixth in school history in career tackles with 273. Even though it's been nearly two decades since he left, he still ranks 10th. From 1995-99, Penn State posted a 39- 11 record and at times was ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the nation, losing two opportu- nities late in the 1997 and '99 seasons to play for the national championship. The last-second loss to 14-point underdog Minnesota on a fourth-and-long pass completion and subsequent 32-yard field

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