Penn State Sports Magazine
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5 6 M A 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 quarter against Temple, Paterno yanked him and watched Hostetler complete 7 of 10 passes for 111 yards. The Lions won handily, but Paterno knew he had a di- lemma at quarter- back. "My problem is that all three are good young quar- terbacks," he told reporters follow- ing the 50-7 victory over the Owls. "I go to bed at night wor- rying about being fair to them." 'A Tough Decision' Earlier that season, Hostetler had played a starring role for Penn State dur- ing a visit to West Virginia. Blackledge had gotten hurt in the first quarter, and Hostetler finished the game, engineering a 20-15 comeback victory. The Mountaineers were under new leadership at the time, with Don Nehlen, a Bo Schembechler protégé, having been hired to oversee the rebuild following four consecutive losing seasons. Moun- taineer Field was brand new, too, and from Hostetler's vantage point, the fans seemed to be excited about what was hap- pening in Morgantown. "We came down into the new stadium, and the locker room wasn't ready yet," he recalled years later in an interview with The Parkersburg (W.Va.) News and Sen- tinel. "We had to walk through the stands to get to the locker room. I ended up play- ing in that game, and we ended up beating West Virginia. "They were beating us the whole game, and we wound up winning at the end. I remember walking through the stadium, and some of the fans were already in. I remember it like it was yesterday. I turned to my roommate, Billy Crummy, and said, 'Wow, look at these fans. Wouldn't these guys be great to play in front of?'" Two years later, he got that chance. Hostetler transferred after the 1980 sea- son and sat out the following year in ac- cordance with NCAA rules. When he re- turned to action in West Virginia's 1982 season opener, it was as the Mountain- eers' unquestioned starter at quarterback. He threw for 321 yards and 4 touchdowns, and West Virginia upset ninth-ranked Oklahoma, 41-27. Hostetler ended up going 18-6 in his two seasons at WVU and was named a third-team All-American as a senior. His success validated what he described as "a tough decision" to leave State College after his redshirt freshman season. "I grew up in the shadow of Penn State," he told The News and Sentinel. "I had two older brothers that played there. I have a brother-in-law that played there. I had a younger brother that was playing baseball there. I had sisters that went to school there. "When I was coming out of high school, I knew Penn State was where I was go- ing … and so did everybody else. To leave there was a tough thing to do." Hostetler didn't b ea t h i s fo r m e r team. Penn State won 24-0 in Mor- gantown in 1982 and 41-23 at Beaver Stadium the follow- ing year. But he did parlay his collegiate success into a long NFL career. He was chosen in the third round of the 1984 draft by the New York Giants and went on to spend 14 seasons in the league. Filling in for Phil Simms after a late-season injury, Hostetler led the Giants to a Super Bowl championship in 1991, completing 20 of 32 passes for 222 yards in a 20-19 victory over Buffalo, a game best remembered for Scott Norwood's missed field goal at- tempt in the closing seconds. Blackledge did OK for himself, too. He led the Lions to a 10-2 record and a Fiesta Bowl win over USC in 1981, then guided them to a national championship the fol- lowing year, winning the Davey O'Brien Award and Sugar Bowl MVP honors in the process while also finishing sixth in the Heisman Trophy balloting. He was chosen in the first round of the 1983 draft by Kansas City, and while he didn't enjoy the kind of success at the pro level that he had experienced in college, he later made a smooth transition into broadcasting as a color analyst for ESPN, ABC, CBS and NBC. It's possible, of course, that Penn State would have won the 1982 national cham- pionship if Hostetler had stayed. How- ever, it's also possible that his back-and- forth battle with Blackledge would have continued into the 1981 and '82 seasons, preventing either player from reaching his full potential. By leaving when he did, Hostetler cre- ated a lane for himself while also clearing the way for Blackledge to become one of the most successful quarterbacks in Penn State history. For a developmental pro- gram like PSU, it doesn't get much better than that. ■ "I grew up in the shadow of Penn State. I had two older brothers that played there. I have a brother-in-law that played there. I had a younger brother that was playing baseball there. I had sisters that went to school there. … To leave there was a tough thing to do." J E F F H O S T E T L E R , T O T H E P A R K E R S B U R G ( W . V A . ) N E W S A N D S E N T I N E L After leaving Penn State, Jeff Hostetler spent two sea- sons as West Virginia's starting quarterback, guiding the Mountaineers to a combined 18-6 record in 1982 and '83. PHOTO COURTESY WEST VIRGINIA ATHLETICS