Blue White Illustrated

These recruits brought something to the table ���m not a recruitnik. In fact, I still believe all the time and energy the general public spends following the recruiting of still naive, susceptible adolescent high school football players is not only a foolish waste of time but irrational. Come on. Turn off the computer and iPhone and take the family to Chuck E. Cheese or a PG movie. Treat your wife to dinner at a fancy restaurant. Go to a museum or read that book you don���t think you have time for. Or simply quit cheating on your boss and do what you were hired to do. Maybe the livelihood of the coaches and their families at your favorite college football team depends on these mostly egocentric kids and their sometimes equally pretentious parents. But if you screw up at your job or miss your daughter���s piano recital because you���re so concerned that the next Heisman Johnny is going to sign with your team���s archrival, then maybe you need to see Tony Soprano���s psychiatrist. I Now, before all you true BWI recruitniks start overwhelming the message boards with your diatribes and venom, insisting that I be fired or tarred and feathered, I am jesting ��� partially. Actually, I look at the recruitnik world as just another facet of modern entertainment, like fantasy football, watching television or spending a night or two every week with a lap dancer at a strip club. Unlike most of you reading this, I���ve seen the recruiting process up close, and frankly it was quite revealing, and a lot of fun, too. When I was the director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum in the early 2000s, Penn State would occasionally host a pre-dinner reception in the museum lobby for the recruits and their families during the height of the December and early-January recruiting period. We���d open the museum for them to go through. My wife, Carole, and I would mingle with the recruits and parents, talking about the museum exhibits but also bantering with the players about their personal lives, such as where they were from and how many brothers and sisters they had. After about an hour, Carole and I would join everyone for dinner in the Mount Nittany Club on the fourth floor of Beaver Stadium. Later, when I would hear coach Joe Paterno tell inquiring reporters what he told the recruits at those private affairs, I would shake my head in assent because he described what my wife and I heard. The media was skeptical, but it was true. We couldn���t talk about it back then, but we can now. Carole and I would be assigned to sit at one of the tables with usually one coach and a couple of players he was recruiting. Once we were all seated, but before going to the buffet line, Joe would speak, standing informally at one side of the room and never on a podium. Joe would talk for about five minutes or so but wouldn���t stay for dinner. During his off-the-cuff remarks, he would tell the players that after dinner they would be going off for the night with their player host, who usually was not at dinner, and their parents would go to his home on McKee Street where they would ���enjoy an adult beverage or two.��� I can still remember what he always told the recruits. What follows are not his exact words but it went something like this: ���Penn State is a great university and I can guarantee you and your parents that if you come here you will get an outstanding education and if you study hard and go to class you will graduate. I cannot promise you that you will start or even play a lot. That is up to you. On the field and in the classroom. This is not a place for everyone and maybe not for you. Many schools put their recruits up in fancy hotels and throw them lavish parties. We put you in the dorms with our football players because that���s where you���ll live when you play for Penn State, not some hotel. And you can ask our players anything you want to about being part of our football team, the good, and maybe the not so good. We���re not trying to fool you.��� Joe would go on about Penn State���s tradition in football, sometimes mention the practice facilities and quality training and medical staff, and throw in a wisecrack here and there, usually picking out a specific player or two for his sometimes subtle zingers. I remember one time he teased defensive lineman Ed Johnson, who was from Detroit, about his clothing and long hair and about having had a lot of Johnsons on the team in the past, and then made a jest about the bad reputation of Johnson���s hometown. And Joe seemed to always end his brief remarks with a line like this: ���So enjoy your dinner and have fun tonight with your player host ��� but not too much fun.��� Before leaving, he would stop at each table and kibitz a little with the recruits and parents, and then he was off. The table conversations were often the most intriguing part of the night, and by the time we left, Carole and I both would have a feeling who was

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