Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/115002
AHEAD OF THE ���PACK Coles enjoyed the best day of his career against North Carolina State in 1980, rushing for 151 yards on 12 carries in Penn State���s 21-13 victory. Photo courtesy of the Paterno-Pattee Archives not a hall of famer, just let his inner voice take possession of him, and he got up on a bench and let it out in a yell: ������Listen, you guys, we���ve got six games to prove that we���re a good football team!��� ���You could just see a dark cloud of discouragement explode and disintegrate. The kids began to cheer for themselves.��� We know now that the revitalized and re-motivated players went back to work with diligence. They won their last six regular-season games, moved back up to No. 2 and were rewarded with the opportunity to play No. 1, unbeaten Georgia, in the Sugar Bowl on New Year���s night, 1983. Gregg Garrity, forever a Penn State icon thanks to his diving fourth-quarter touchdown reception, said none of that may have happened without Coles��� inspirational locker-room challenge. Garrity recalled the scene in a BWI interview with this writer five years ago: ���He just got everyone together right there and started yelling and screaming at us, basically telling us, ���We���re better than that. Just don���t hang your head.��� I think he gave everyone a kick in the butt that we needed. He was a spot player, a good player, but we had some great running backs. But Joel just got us all going again, kept us together, and basically said we���re better and we have to play better than this. I���ve heard a bunch of [players] talking right to this day that it helped them keep going.��� Thirty years later, Coles still cannot believe his few words that day were so monumental in the 126-year history of Penn State football. ���I didn���t realize what I had done until long after the fact, once I got away from it and began returning to Penn State to attend functions and whatnot, and different guys were coming up and saying how what I said impacted and inspired them to go forward.��� To Coles, what he did in 1982 was routine, like a pep talk a player would give to another after a fumble or a muffed touchdown. ���In watching the game, I felt we were a better team than we had displayed,��� he recalled recently. ���I was more angry than disappointed because I thought we were better than that and just hadn���t played our best game. I thought we kinda let one get away. I was more frustrated and angry than depressed about the loss. I���ve always been pretty emotional. So, that anger and emotion I felt boiled in the locker room after the game, and it just came over me to say what was in my heart. ���I think the majority of the guys felt the same way I did but were just reluctant to vocalize it. There was no rousing response or cheering or anything like that. It���s hard to have a rousing cheer following a disappointment like that. I think everybody just took what I said to heart and we went on.��� Coles proudly wears his national championship ring, and he is happy