Penn State Sports Magazine
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Rival coaches took similar paths to football's summit 2 0 1 9 S E A S O N P R E V I E W They were on opposite sides of the de- bate over college football's 1994 national championship, but Joe Paterno and Tom Osborne had a lot in common. Both coaches rose through the ranks a;er years as assistants at a college that was not their alma mater and succeeded their mentor as head coach. Both prede- cessors, Rip Engle at Penn State and Bob Devaney at Nebraska, had revitalized the football program at their respective schools. It took Engle a decade to make Penn State into one of the elite teams in the East, while Devaney quickly turned around a miserable Cornhusker record of 17 losing seasons in 21 years. From 1962 through 1972, his teams won two national championships with a record of 136-30-7 and never had a losing sea- son. Like Paterno in the late 1960s and early '70s, Osborne became one of the country's hot new coaches in the mid- 1970s and a media favorite. The same Dan Jenkins who criticized Penn State's Eastern-heavy schedule in 1972 helped burnish the image of Paterno as a young coaching wizard in a November 1968 edition of Sports Illustrated, writing, "Wouldn't it be something if the best team in the U.S. just happened to turn out to be the most hidden, the most in- tellectual, the most relaxed – and the one with the coach who was least pre- dictable?" A few years later, it was Osborne in the media's spotlight with his teams competing for national champi- onships. Their politics also were similar as staunch Republicans with national visi- bility. Paterno turned down pro:ers to run for governor but seconded the presi- dential nomination of his friend George H.W. Bush at the 1988 GOP convention. A;er retiring as coach, Osborne was elected to Congress, serving from 2000- 06. The major di:erence between them had to do with their personalities. Pa- terno was a wisecracking extrovert who sometimes o:ended opposing coaches and the media with his bluntness. Os- borne is a more so;-spoken, stoic man who usually keeps his composure. "Their styles are di:erent, but their teams achieve at the highest level," said longtime sportswriter Malcolm Moran, now director of the Sports Capital Jour- nalism Program at IUPUI in Indianapo- lis. –L.P. again, Osborne earned more respect, and it all boiled over in 1994. The 1993 national championship game was played under the auspices of the Bowl Coalition and, here again, an un- foreseen circumstance had an enormous effect on the 1994 team. Until 1992, the media and coaches' polls that deter- mined the national championship would differ sometimes, resulting in co-cham- pions. That had happened in 1990 and '91, and in an attempt to avoid this out- come again, an organization of all the major conferences except the Big Ten and Pac-10 was formed in 1992. Dubbed the Bowl Coalition, the organization would use the polls to set up a national championship game between the two highest-rated teams. This was one of the forerunners of the more recent Bowl Championship Series and College Foot- ball Playoff. However, the voters in the polls were not mandated to vote for the winner of the coalition's game. With the Big Ten and Pac-10 not participating in the coalition because of their exclusive Rose Bowl contract, co-champs were still conceivable. Until 1991, Penn State had been an in- dependent and not aligned with a con- ference. That changed when it joined the Big Ten. While most Penn State sports teams began league competition in the 1991-92 academic year, football was de- layed until 1993 because of scheduling issues. Penn State's entry into the Big Ten did not go over well with most of the conference football coaches and some athletic directors, who were not con- sulted. The animosity carried over into the 1994 season, and many media mem- bers covering the Big Ten empathized with the incumbent football coaches. They looked at the Nittany Lions as out- siders and were sure Penn State was get- ting an unfair break in the 1993 and '94 schedules. Penn State's stumble early in the 1993 season gave its detractors something to gloat about, and that mindset carried over into 1994, despite two impressive come-from-behind wins at the end of '93. The offense figured to be the team's strength in '94 with seven starters and 41 lettermen returning, but the defense was inexperienced after losing eight starters. That analysis showed up in the presea- son polls when both tabbed the Lions at No. 9 behind all the other prime con- tenders, with Florida at No. 1. Nebraska was ranked No. 3 in the coaches' poll and No. 4 by the AP. Three other schools that would affect Penn State's eventual rejection by the voters also were rated higher than the Lions: Michigan, Miami and Colorado. Penn State received only one vote for first place, in the coaches' poll, compared to 12 for Nebraska and a differential of 353 total points. The Cornhuskers had 18 first-place votes in the AP poll and 386 more total points than the Nittany Lions. USA Today's longtime sports analyst, Danny Sheridan, favored Florida to win PATERNO OSBORNE