Blue White Illustrated

Notre Dame transfer Rados revived career with Nittany Lions H I S T O R Y Stevens, Devlin had the misfortune of following a highly successful player by one year. With two years of experience as the prime backup to Anthony Morelli, Clark had a big advantage over the red- shirt sophomore Devlin, who had played in only three games before the 2008 sea- son. Many Penn State fans were rooting for Devlin because his family was pure blue and white. His mother, father and sister were Penn State graduates, and his ma- ternal grandfather was a season-ticket holder who routinely attended the Quar- terback Club's weekly in-season lunch- eons. Paterno named Clark the starting quarterback on Aug. 26, 2008. Clark le@ Devlin in his wake, leading the Lions to an 11-2 Rose Bowl season and No. 8 ranking while setting or closing in on several quarterback passing and running records. Devlin was relegated to mop-up duty, passing for 459 yards and four touch- downs with no interceptions. His big break seemed to come in the ninth game of the season under the lights at Ohio State when a third-quarter hit to the head sent Clark to the sideline for the rest of the night. The Lions were trailing, 6-3, with 10 minutes, 13 seconds le@ in the fourth quarter following a Buckeye fum- ble at the Penn State 38-yard line. Devlin drove Penn State 62 yards and scored the winning touchdown on a 1-yard run. A =eld goal made the =nal score 13-6. The next week at Iowa, Devlin never played despite a terrible performance by Clark. The Hawkeyes trailed by nine points at the start of the fourth quarter but earned a 24-23 upset victory with a last-second 31-yard =eld goal. Devlin hardly played in the last two regular-sea- son games and le@ the team before the Rose Bowl, transferring to Division I-AA Delaware so that he could play in 2009. Clark continued changing the record book in 2009 and was co-winner of the Chicago Tribune's Silver Football award. Devlin became one of Delaware's all-time leading passers. Neither one had much success in the pros. 2011: Matt McGloin, Kevin Newsome, Rob Bolden and Paul Jones This competition turned into a wild four-ring circus without the cotton candy, and the winner was an invited T ony Rados wanted to become an All- America quarterback at Notre Dame and lead Coach Frank Leahy's team to another national championship. An outstanding quarterback at Harris- burg's Catholic (now Bishop McDevitt) High, Rados was overwhelmed when Leahy recruited him shortly a@er the 1948 season. A@er hir- ing Leahy in 1946, the Fighting Irish had won back-to-back national titles in 1946-47 and =nished second behind Michigan in '48. Freshmen were ineli- gible in 1949, and while playing on the fresh- man team, Rados suf- fered a right knee injury that would have a deleterious e?ect on the rest of his football career. As his son Michael ex- plained in a recent interview, Rados had become disillusioned with the Notre Dame football program. He also was homesick. So, a@er the fall semester, Rados re- turned to his home in Steelton. He then transferred to Penn State and sat out the 1950 season. Three years later, Rados was considered the best pure quarter- back in Penn State's history, a di?erent breed in the Lions' T-formation o?ense than the designated single-wing quar- terbacks of the past who combined the characteristics of a blocking back, sig- nal-caller and runner-passer. However, he was not an overnight suc- cess. Rados and another inexperienced sophomore, Bob Szajna (pronounced SHINE-a), shared the position in 1951. Szajna received more starts, but neither played well. During spring practice the following year, Rados was hobbled by the lingering e?ects of his knee injury, and Szajna started the season opener against Temple. With the game scoreless in the =rst quarter, coach Rip Engle sur- prisingly sent in Rados, who proceeded to spark the home team to a 20-13 vic- tory. The next week, Engle started Rados against heavily favored Purdue, the Big Ten Conference preseason favorite led by senior Dale Samuels, one of the top quarterbacks in the nation. Rados out- played and outpassed Samuels in a stun- ning 20-20 tie that came down to the last play and made national headlines, turning Rados into a campus hero. Pur- due went on to share the Big Ten title with Wisconsin, and Penn State became a serious threat in the East. However, when rules were changed be- fore the 1953 season, eliminating two- platoon football and forcing everyone to play defense and o?ense, Rados was doomed. His knee had prevented him from running a lot, and he could not stand the rigors required of a defensive back. "We had a dickens of a time, trying to hide him in the secondary," admitted assistant coach Tor Toretti years later. Another knee operation the preceding winter helped Rados put together his best statistical season in 1953 when he was the leading passer in the nation. By the end of his All-East career, Rados was the Lions' passing leader in several single-season, single-game and career categories. He =nished with 2,437 passing yards, 18 touchdowns and 25 interceptions. Rados had been dra@ed by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 17th round a@er his junior season. When he couldn't pass an Eagles running test in preseason camp because of his knee, he began working in sales for Gulf Oil. He later spent more than a decade with the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue until kidney cancer caused his death at age 54 in 1994. –L.P. RADOS

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