Blue White Illustrated

T H E 2 0 1 8 S E A S O N less intensity throughout much of the original Big Ten country. Remember, it was the university presi- dents who brought Penn State into the Big Ten. The athletic directors and their head coaches were not consulted, and some of them complained vociferously, led by the athletic directors at Michigan (former football coach Bo Schembech- ler) and Ohio State (former Michigan wrestler Rick Bay). I knew their mindset, not only because I lived in Michigan in the early 1970s and later in Ohio, but also because I had been a Michigan foot- ball fan since I was a teenager. The Detroit area had been my second home almost since I was wearing short pants. Both sides of my western Penn- sylvania family had emigrated there. When my Uncle Frank was studying for his master's degree at Michigan in 1952, we walked into that massive empty sta- dium one weekday and I was hooked. At the time, I was still a Pitt fan with no thoughts of attending Penn State. Once I enrolled at Penn State in the fall of 1955, Pitt went into the Dumpster. But not Michigan. Since my experience in Detroit in the early 1950s, I set a goal of writing sports for one of the city's three newspapers. By November 1969, the Detroit News signed my paychecks but I was working as the assistant news director at WWJ, the radio and TV station the newspaper owned. It was one of the world's histori- cal pioneering broadcast properties in radio in 1920 along with Pittsburgh's KDKA. In 1969, WWJ Radio and a few other Michigan stations aired Wolver- ines football, and the next season as an extracurricular activity I became the spotter at home games for our broadcast crew. That lasted until I left for an NBC network radio news job in Chicago in 1975. Back in those two decades, Michigan and Ohio State were so dominant in the conference that the media came up with a nickname: the Big Two and the Little Eight. From 1968 through 1979, the two teams shared the league championship five times, with Ohio State winning four titles outright and Michigan two. Michi- gan also shared the 1978 championship with cross-state rival Michigan State. The game day atmosphere at the Big House was radically different than what I had experienced as a writer and televi- sion reporter covering Penn State in the 1960s. Of course, this was long before the multiple expansions of Beaver Sta- dium, White Outs and "ESPN College GameDay." So, in 1972 I wrote an offbeat story about my involvement with Michi- gan football that was published in the Penn State football program for the Pitt game at Beaver Stadium on Nov. 25. It was entitled "A heathen among mis- sionaries." The opening of that article sums up my perception of the indifference and arrogance of Michigan and the rest of the Big Ten: "Being a Penn State football fan in Big l0 Country is comparable to being a slovenly heathen among thousands of impeccable missionaries. "You really don't know what loneliness is until you've sat among 101,000 mid- west blue noses in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and listened to the silence that greets Penn State football scores. Why, Slip- pery Rock gets a more enthusiastic re- ception at the Michigan football games than Penn State! "Admittedly, the situation is gradually changing. Three years ago, this provin- cial auto capital placed Penn State foot- ball somewhere between an Italian boccia game and a Polish soccer exhibi- tion. Now days, at least, they've scratched out the soccer." Later in the piece I tossed out some disparaging lines about Midwesterners and then added some additional obser- vations: "[In 1970], I had become the spotter for the Michigan radio broadcasting team and the verbal jibes over Detroit airwaves were devastating. ('And in a real biggie out of the east, it's Syracuse 24, Penn State 7. Whoopee.') But even that insult was progress since State scores previously had been confused with either the University of Pennsylva- nia, Kent State or the McKeesport Little Tigers. "Of course, it's somewhat different now. I'm still the spotter for our WWJ radio team (950 on your AM dial, folks) but the aired remarks about State foot- ball have improved... "Despite this new-found prestige for Penn State in the midwest, there is still a need to convert more missionaries. "Unless the Nittany Lions are playing a Big 10 team, the wire service reports of their games are usually restricted to a paragraph or two in the Sunday Detroit papers. That means a delay at least until Monday, when the Sunday New York Times arrives, or a long 272 week wait via the mail for Ridge Riley's informative Football Letter, to get the details of the game. "Getting Penn State's quarter by quar- ter scores through Western Union is al- most like waiting each week for the birth of a baby. Usually, the only game infor- mation I get Saturday comes in this manner. And you can imagine the ap- prehension when the score reads, 'Third period, lowa 3, Penn State 0.'" Changing attitudes The indifferent attitude toward Penn State had changed by 1993 when the Nittany Lions played their first Big Ten game, outclassing Minnesota, 38-20, at Beaver Stadium. Two national champi- onships, a couple of near misses and an- other undefeated season with a Heisman Trophy winner had finally made a dent in the myopic Big Ten world. The Min- nesota conquest was followed two weeks later by a 31-0 thrashing of Iowa on the road. So, when the Nittany Lions suited up for Michigan at Beaver Stadium with a 5-0 record (including three nonconfer- ence victories), they had climbed from No. 16 in the preseason AP poll to No. 7. Michigan had been ranked third in the preseason, but upset losses to Notre Dame and Michigan State had dropped the Wolverines to No. 18 in the poll with a 3-2 record. That made the Nittany Lions slight favorites, but in the weeks before the game Michigan players and coaches had showed their disdain for

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