Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1530530
6 2 J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 5 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M W hen James Franklin and his team take the field at Beaver Stadium on Dec. 21 to face SMU in the first round of the College Football Playoff, they will be making Penn State history. They will become the first Nittany Lion team to par- ticipate in the sport's showcase event, which is in its 11th year overall and first as a 12-team tournament. Perhaps no one would have appre- ciated the magnitude of that long- awaited moment more than the man who established Penn State as a na- tionally relevant program, Joe Paterno. For much of his 46-year head coach- ing career, Paterno was a zealous play- off advocate. He was motivated in large part by the sneering attitude that many of the sport's power brokers held to- ward Eastern football in general, and his program in particular, during the 1960s and '70s when he was trying to build the Nittany Lions into national championship contenders. From 1968-73, Penn State fielded three undefeated teams, yet none of them were crowned national champs. The closest PSU came to the mythi- cal title was in 1969 when it finished second to Texas in both the Associated Press and UPI coaches' polls. In 1973, the Lions went 12-0 with a win over LSU in the Orange Bowl and yet some- how came in fifth in both polls. Those slights were still lodged firmly in Paterno's craw decades later. During a news conference in advance of Penn State's matchup against Oregon in the 1995 Rose Bowl, he admitted that he had trouble looking past the dismissive treatment his teams had received in the early years of his head coaching career. "I have always kind of resented the fact that we have had only two national champions," he said, referring to the Lions' titles in 1982 and '86. "I like to think we had five. I think the 1968, 1969 and 1973 teams were worthy of national championships." As Paterno was all too aware at the AHEAD OF HIS TIME No one pushed harder for a playoff at college football's highest level than Joe Paterno M AT T H E R B | M AT T. H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M Paterno led Penn State to five unbeaten seasons in his 46 years as head coach, yet only one of those teams, the 1986 squad, was crowned national champion. PHOTO COURTESY PENN STATE ATHLETICS