Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1276571
guy, didn't joke around a lot, very detail- oriented. He was very meticulous: step- ping with the correct foot, stepping the proper distance, keeping your torso low. These are the fundamentals I learned from him that paid huge dividends later on in college and the pros." Benson referred to Anderson as "a tremendous tactical guy" who paid at- tention to details. "Dick was a great teacher," Benson said. "He was so:-spo- ken and as good a person as he was a coach." In the 1970s, Anderson was coaching the o9ensive line for the 8rst time. It had been more than a decade since his Penn State playing days in the early 1960s, when he saw action mostly as a defensive end. Anderson continued coaching the Nittany Lions' o9ensive line until 1983 when he became the head coach at Rutgers. He returned to Penn State in 1990 and coached the o9ensive line again for three years before spending the rest of his coaching career overseeing di9erent spots, including various posi- tions on the o9ensive line from 1999 until Paterno and most of his assistants were ousted because of the 2011 scandal. During Levi Brown's time, Anderson and Kenney combined to coach the o9en- sive line, including the tight ends. "They were di9erent," Brown said. "Coach An- derson was more of a technique guy, and Coach Kenny was more the 8recracker type, go a:er them and get it done by whatever means necessary. Together, they were a great combination as to in- stilling the right values to be your best on the o9ensive line." Dorney describes a long-ago practice session involving Benson that went to the core of Anderson's coaching philosophy. "I remember one incident in practice when I was a sophomore where Brad Ben- son made this block that knocked his guy 15 yards down8eld, and that wasn't good enough for Dick. We're in the 8lm room, and Dick continues to run this one play back and forth. He tells us to look at Brad Benson. Brad knocks this poor guy back 15 yards o9 the line of scrimmage, an incred- ible e9ort and an incredible block. And Dick's point was if he would have lunged through his target down the 8eld, he could have had a pancake. Dick wasn't satis8ed with Brad knocking the guy 15 yards down the 8eld. He wanted a pancake." Not surprisingly, neither Ander- son nor Benson remembers the in- cident, but Anderson knows what point he would have been making. In 1976, he was in only his fourth year as Penn State's o9ensive line coach. "All I wanted from the kids was all-out e9ort all the time," he said recently. "When they had somebody like that under control, they should be able to 8nish them. I wouldn't have graded [Brad] down, but it was just to say, 'You've got to be at the top of your game all the time, and when you've got the upper hand, you'd better 8nish it.' " Anderson will not single out one player as the best of his Penn State o9ensive line proteges but, obviously, Dorney and Ben- son are up there. "I coached them early in my career and was thankful to have them because of what they were all about," An- SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE Dor- ney (right) and quarterback Chuck Fusina were two of the stars of the Nittany Lions' 1978 team that played for the national title. Photo cour- tesy of Keith Dor- ney