Blue White Illustrated

H I S T O R Y About halfway through that drive, the rain started. That's when the frantic scramble began behind the Penn State bench, virtually ignored by spectators in- side the stadium, unseen by the television audience and never mentioned by the CBS broadcast crew, Brent Musburger and Dick Vermeil. Back then, the team traveled to all away games with a portable double-decker rack filled with two different types of football shoes. The regular shoes the players wore for games in dry weather conditions were in separated containers. Use of the wet-weather shoes depended on the surface of the playing field – grass or the original AstroTurf. The wooden rack was about 9 feet long, 7 feet tall and 2½ feet wide, but fans were unaware of it because the rack was covered with a tarp when not in use. The field at Memorial Stadium was the original AstroTurf that had been created in 1965. Unlike the artificial turf of today, this was a hard and abrasive indoor nylon carpet that was somewhat hazardous for players, frequently causing rug burns and turf toe, which is a painful strain of liga- ments in the big toe. With the offense on the field, assistant equipment manager Spider Caldwell and junior manager Kirk Diehl began retriev- ing the specialty AstroTurf shoes they called "The Destroyer" from the rack and helping defensive players change their shoes. Equipment manager Tim Shope and the two senior managers, Mark Ritter and Chris Molnar, were busy keeping the ball dry, so it was up to Caldwell and Diehl to handle all the shoe changing. "We had to work fast, and we were using scissors to cut off the old shoe strings and tape around their ankles," Caldwell recalled. "It was quite hectic." As the teams lined up for the Penn State kickoff, Caldwell and Diehl were starting to change the shoes of the offense, begin- ning with the interior linemen. "I remember that," Hartings said with a chuckle. "Obviously, we weren't used to playing on turf. I don't know how big of an issue that was, but if Spider said it was, then it was." At one point during the Illini's posses- sion, while Hartings and his fellow offensive linemen were still changing shoes, wide receivers coach Kenny Jackson confronted Cald- well working with a line- man. "Kenny yelled, 'Don't worry about him, get the shoes on them,' motioning toward his receivers, Bobby Engram and Freddie Scott," Caldwell re- membered. "I said, 'Kenny, if the offen- sive line doesn't protect the quarterback, he's not going to get the ball to the re- ceivers.' Joe sees this and walks over. 'Everybody calm down,' he said. He turned to Kenny and said, 'Let him do his job.' We actually never finished with the offense until they were near the middle of that final drive, past midfield. Kyle Brady was the last one. Not every player got them, because it was their choice." While Caldwell and Diehl were franti- cally changing the shoes of the Nittany Lion offense, the Illini's senior return man, Damien Platt, took Conway's kick- off at the 3-yard line and ran right along the Penn State sideline until he was pushed out of bounds at the 28. A first- down run toward the Penn State sideline gained 2 yards, but on second down, a short pass completion also in front of the visitors' bench lost a yard. With Penn State in prevent defense on third down, junior quarterback Johnny Johnson had time to see senior wide receiver Jasper Strong open along the Illini sideline at their 5-yard line, but the ball sailed past Strong out of bounds. Later, Strong ad- mitted he had run the wrong pattern. Brett Larson set up near the Illini 15- yard line to punt. Mike Archie, still wear- ing his old shoes, dropped back to about Penn State's 35. Larson, boomed one to- OFF TO THE RACES Scott's 38-yard touchdown catch late in the second quarter cut Penn State's deficit to 21-14. BWI file photo

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