Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1276571
"worked out a ticket and appearance deal"
for
a New Jersey car dealer. They became
close friends, and the dealer brought Ben-
son into the business as a partner, starting
with a Jaguar franchise and then moving
on to Hyundais and Mitsubishis under the
umbrella of the Brad Benson Auto Group.
That's when Brad Benson, the relatively
obscure o=ensive lineman, became a Big
Apple celebrity by doing his own wacky
television and radio commercials for his
company. In one popular commercial, he
parodied former New York Gov. Eliot
Spitzer, and in another he bragged about a
goalpost he bought from the original Gi-
ants Stadium in the Meadowlands, mak-
ing an anatomical comparison aimed at
impressing potential car buyers. Benson
now works for a private equity ;rm.
Dorney turned to writing and teaching
a?er his retirement and wrote his own
autobiography without a ghostwriter, fo-
cusing on his Penn State and Detroit
Lions careers. "Black and Honolulu Blue:
In the Trenches of the NFL," was pub-
lished in 2003. He has taught high school
English in the Santa Rosa-Sebastopol
area north of San Francisco and now puts
his Penn State business degree and his
love of writing and teaching to use with
the San Jose-based Financial Knowledge
Network. The company recruited him at
about the same time he was inducted into
the College Football Hall of Fame in 2006.
"I was always interested in managing
money, and now I'm basically a corporate
trainer for high-tech company employ-
ees," he said. "I started teaching live sem-
inars, but long before COVID-19 we
started using the internet. And I also self-
publish on Amazon a bunch of ;nancial
planning-related books, with such sub-
jects as the Roth IRA and health savings
accounts."
The battle for No. 1
All three players also had disappoint-
ments in their playing careers. Dorney's
biggest disappointment is the most rep-
resentative of all the players on this list
because it occurred during one of the
most heartbreaking moments in Penn
State football history. He learned the hard
way
that no matter how hard one works
or how relentless you are, things don't al-
ways turn out well. That cruel lesson oc-
curred in Dorney's ;nal Penn State game
during the infamous goal-line stand
against Alabama in the 1979 Sugar Bowl.
That 1978 team was the ;rst at Penn State
to reach No. 1 in the polls, but the battle
for the national championship really
came down to two plays with less than
seven minutes le? and Alabama leading,
14-7. On third down and less than foot for
a touchdown, fullback Matt Suhey could
only gain inches running up the middle.
Dorney wrote about what happened next
in the 2006 book "What it Means To Be a
Nittany Lion," a series of player essays
compiled by this writer and Scott Brown.
"It was fourth down. Penn State was
down by seven," he wrote. "All we had to
do was move the football one inch. Just
one inch! ... Chuck Fusina called the play,
a hando= to Mike Guman up the gut, with
fullback Matt Suhey leading the way. … I
hugged the line of scrimmage so the top
of my helmet was just behind the ball,
leaned forward with my all my weight on
my down right hand, and crouched just
inches from the green blades of arti;cial
grass in an attempt to get lower than the
Alabama defensive lineman lined up on
my inside gap. … Coiled like a tightly
wound spring, I exploded o= the ball on
cue, ramming my head into the crimson
helmet attempting to cross my path –
straining, pushing, clawing forward. I
found myself