Blue White Illustrated

Maryland Pregame

Penn State Sports Magazine

Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1054766

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 14 of 18

of stuff, to winning a Big Ten champi- onship, playing in a Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, bowl games that people dream about going to their entire lives [is mean- ingful]. When we got here, there wasn't even a thought that we would have a chance at any bowl game, at least in the next three years when I first got here. I think that's probably what I'm most proud of: how far this team has come over those five years from where we started to where we're going to be finishing up this year, and all the things we've been able to accomplish over my time. Was there a moment during that Iowa game when you injured your knee when you thought, "This might be my college football career ending?" How much more valuable have these last few games been to you? Has there been an element of perspective knowing how quickly you can lose something? Yeah, I think it definitely was a little bit. You hear all the time that guys come back and talk to us about how fast things go and how fast things can be taken away from you. When something like that hap- pens, it's almost like a scare a little bit. You don't necessarily know, especially in the moment, what happened. I think for a little bit, there was a little bit of a scare that, was this going to be the end? Fortunately for me, it wasn't, and it wasn't as bad as I thought initially in my own head. I was able to keep pushing through it. It's been tough, obviously, the past couple of weeks having to deal with injuries and things like that, things that I had not necessarily had to go through in my career. It's put things in perspective that this could be taken away at any time. Fortunately for me it wasn't [a season- ending injury] and I'm able to finish this year out and able to walk on senior day and play with my teammates one more time in Beaver Stadium. Any idea what you plan on doing long a7er football? What was your degree in? Do you plan to do something with that? I got my degree in accounting. Not really sure exactly if I'm going to use that or in what way. I want to stay around the game as long as possible. So whether that's playing as long as I can or coaching, whatever it might be, I'm not exactly sure what I want to do. Part of what I wanted to do with this year was take some broadcast journalism classes, see if there's another avenue that I can [use to] stay around it if I'm not playing it. Honestly, I haven't given too much thought to it. I've just been focused on playing and that kind of stuff. Before the Rutgers game, when you and the quarterbacks were fielding snaps from the center, you fielded a snap and tossed a ball to a kid. That kid was smiling for 10 or 15 minutes a7er the fact. Have you found yourself doing stuff like that more this year? Yeah, this year, that's been something that I've started to do, just something to try and have some fun, I guess. You know, try and make an impact if there's a little kid around there, toss it to him and try and make his day a little bit, whatever it might be. I know if I was a little kid sitting there, that would have made my day. It doesn't distract from anything. It's just that if I can make someone's day a lit- tle bit by doing something as simple as tossing a ball real quick and get back to it, I'll do it. That's just something I've started to do this year and it's worked out, and hopefully I've been able to make a couple of people's days and make a couple of people happier. This senior class as a whole, how do you want you guys to be remembered? What legacy do you hope you guys leave behind? I hope our legacy as a senior class is that a lot of guys came in to Penn State at a time when it wasn't necessarily the brightest. It still had the tradition and everything, but things were still a little bit bleak at the time. I think we just want to be remembered as a bunch of guys who didn't necessarily come in with all the hype as far as the re- cruiting [rankings] and all that, and you know, we didn't have all the high expecta- tions that some people do now. But guys were able to come, work hard, bring Penn State success and then bring it back into the national spotlight, competing for championship-level games, whether it's Big Ten, national championship, we want to be putting ourselves into that conver- sation every single year and giving this program something that they can be proud of: a group of guys who came and worked hard and didn't really care what anybody else said about them or what everyone else expected them to do. We've bonded together and just worked hard to be able to bring this program back to where we thought it should have been in the time we got here. N O V E M B E R   2 1 ,   2 0 1 8 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 15 Last week's victory at Rutgers was McSor- ley's 30th as the Nittany Lions' starting quarterback, lifting the third-year starter past Todd Blackledge and Tony Sacca to become the winningest QB in school his- tory. Photo by Steve Manuel

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Blue White Illustrated - Maryland Pregame