Blue White Illustrated

opportunity to teach 18 activity classes again." Trust me when I say that some of the best times that I've had here were co-teaching classes with other coaches. It provided great opportunities for a young coach to learn from veteran coaches about their experiences not just at Penn State but in the profession itself. Is there any major point you make in your ethics class? I've been lucky that so many of the coaches and others are willing to come in and be guest speakers. I've had eight or nine coaches every semester I teach. When I started the class, more people wanted to go into coaching. There are not many people going into coaching anymore because we lost our direction of being a phys ed school. When I came in 1979, this was the number one school in training phys ed teachers and coaches. It has changed as change happens. And as I tell people all the time, change isn't always good but change is inevitable. It's like experiences. Experiences aren't all good, but they're all valuable. I don't have anybody in this year's class who in- dicates they want to be a coach. I try to tailor it so there is value in the class and to the fact that most of them want to go into physical therapy. Every day we can look in the newspa- pers and find challenges of ethical be- havior taking place in youth and college sports, high school sports, and certainly in professional sports. I don't spend much time in professional sports be- cause I believe it's an oxymoron to say there is ethics in professional sports be- cause for sure it's about the money. When we talk college and high school, we're not 100 percent sure it's about the money, but we know at the highest lev- els as it trickles down it's about the money. During your remarks at the 40th an- niversary luncheon in late August you mentioned how you were fortunate to connect almost immediately with some of the university's leaders and coaches. You said it was a valuable education. Richie Lucas, the former All-America quarterback who went into administration, was one. Bob Patterson, the university's senior fi- nance person for years, was another. Assistant football coach J.T. White was another. First off, Richie Lucas was one of my administrators when I came here. Back then, administrators were assigned by sports and Richie had men's and women's volleyball. I'm very fond of Richie. He was loyal to the program and to the people that he worked with. He was an administrator you could talk things over with, whether you could get things you wanted done or not. If you had a question or concern, he would write it up and send it in and at least you knew he tried. J.T. was out of coaching, but he was in charge of dealer cars. He was such an in- teresting guy but a hard ass, and I never really had much reason to ever interact with him. After he retired and his wife passed away, we became really good friends. In the early years, when I was single, and on days I wasn't teaching, I would play golf every morning on the Penn State course across from Rec Hall with four or five retirees. J.T. was one of the guys. So was Bob Patterson, and Ed Czekaj, who had just retired after years as athletic director, and retired football coaches such as Jim O'Hora and Earl Bruce. Charlie Lupton, who I think was in charge of university fundraising, and Obie Oberholser [a retired trustee] and a few others [were part of the group]. So I became good friends with those guys. But I stopped playing when I got married and we started having kids. What did you learn from those golf outings? The retired football coaches all still lived here. They would reminisce and tell stories as you walked the course. After a while, I became part of a weekly lunch group every Tuesday. It started with me, J.T. White, Ed Czekaj and Bob Patterson. Just the four of us. For years. Every week. If my wife and I wanted to go on vacation, it was always, "Ok, we can't leave until Tuesday after lunch, and I've got to be back by the next Tues- day for lunch." Because I had to pick up J.T. He had a car but didn't like to drive. Eventually, I got J.T. to where he would leave the house on his own. Then there were times I would go get the lunch and we would sit in J.T.'s house, look out the back window at a tree with a bird feeder and we would just eat lunch and talk, like about how he played in the Rose Bowl for Ohio State and Michigan. It was like that Mitch Albom book, "Tuesdays with Morrie." Eventually, the grouping of people got larger and certainly ex- panded. Then Richie Lucas was part of the lunch group and Frank Forni [the VP of governmental affairs] was there for a long time, [faculty representative] John Coyle and a number of former university employees. What did you get from your rela- tionship with those guys? Just listening to the stories, I learned a lot about how the university and the athletic department functioned and es- pecially a historical lesson from people who were in the room making the deci- sions. All the stories gave me a great in- sight into the personalities and the internal politics. How did that help you in your job? I don't know if it helped me in my job. It just gave me a historical understand- ing of various decisions and how the university grew and functioned, espe- cially in athletics. I appreciated the fact that these guys were loyal to Penn State. That should be the formula for every- body. It was great and gave me an aware- ness and a knowledge of how schools operated in the past before athletics be- came such big business. Let's talk about your personality. Where did your personality come from? Your mother? Your dad? I think it comes from my upbringing and is similar to [comedian] Larry David. I don't know. It's like everything else. It's an acquired taste. I've always been my own person. I don't spend

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