Blue White Illustrated

May 2022

Penn State Sports Magazine

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6 0 M A Y 2 0 2 2 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M A WORKING RELATIONSHIP James Franklin wants 'alignment' with Penn State's next athletics director. History suggests he's likely to find it. I t's a well-known part of Penn State's football lore that Joe Paterno nearly left in 1973 to become head coach and general manager of the New England Pa- triots. Less well known is that Paterno wasn't going to be the only one departing. In his autobiography, "Paterno by the Book," the longtime Nittany Lions coach recounts the night he made his decision. He had initially accepted the offer and later booked a charter flight so that he and his wife, Sue, could meet with Pa- triots owner Bill Sullivan in New York the next morning. After dinner, the Paternos invited Jim Tarman and his wife, Louise, over to the house to celebrate. Tarman was Penn State's assistant athletics di- rector at the time and a close friend of the coach. "I had asked him to come with me to Boston," Paterno wrote. "We poured champagne and toasted and talked about our good new life." Even before the Tarmans left that night, Paterno was having second thoughts. He knew that Sue wasn't eager to leave State College, and as he began to think about the consequences of his decision — not just on his family, but on the coaching staff that he would be leav- ing behind — the deal started to seem less tantalizing. The next morning, he called Sullivan and told him he would not be coming after all. It was the end of Paterno's flirtation with the NFL. But his partnership with Tarman? That was just getting started. The two men worked hand-in-hand during the 1970s to turn Penn State's football program into a legitimate na- tional championship contender. As Paterno ascended, so too did Tarman; a decade after Paterno rebuffed the Pa- triots, Tarman was named Penn State's athletics director, a position he ended up holding for 11 years. 'CRITICAL FOR THE UNIVERSITY' The relationship between athlet- ics directors and head football coaches has been a topic of some interest at Penn State lately. When Sandy Barbour announced that she would be step- ping down this summer, her decision touched off a national search for a suc- cessor while also prompting a conversa- tion among Nittany Lion followers about how responsive the athletics department should be to the needs of its most promi- nent program. James Franklin has said that if Penn State wants to compete at the highest levels of college football, it needs "align- ment" between the program and the M AT T H E R B | M AT T @ B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M Even after moving from Penn State's sports information office into athletics administration, Jim Tarman served as host of Joe Paterno's television show, "TV Quarterbacks." PHOTO COURTESY PENN STATE ATHLETICS

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