Penn State Sports Magazine
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6 2 N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 6 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M next day. Penn State took a 21-7 lead into halftime and intercepted 2 passes in the final five minutes to hold on for a joyous 21-20 victory. Engle never did suffer a losing sea- son in 16 years as head coach at Penn State. His worst finish came in 1965, when the Lions went 5-5. He announced his retirement shortly afterward, step- ping down as Penn State's all-time win- ningest coach at 104-48-4. As successful as he was, Engle's most significant contribution to Penn State was to bring Paterno with him to State College as an assistant. The former Brown quarterback was named head coach on Feb. 19, 1966, and he would go on to surpass his mentor — along with every other coach in major-college foot- ball history — with 409 career victories. But before rising to the top of his pro- fession, he had to endure a middling debut season, followed by a sluggish start in Year 2. Paterno won his first game as Penn State's head coach, with defensive tackle Mike Reid supplying 3 safeties in a 15-7 victory over visiting Maryland on Sept. 17. The following week, the Nittany Lions were crushed by No. 1 Michigan State, 42-8, in East Lansing, and they dropped two additional games against ranked opponents — road trips to No. 4 UCLA and No. 5 Georgia Tech — by a cumulative score of 70-11. With losses to Army and Syracuse thrown in, the Lions finished 5-5. Recounting the experience years later in his autobiog- raphy, "Paterno By The Book," the coach wrote that it "should have been one of the happiest [years] of my life" but in- stead was "one of the darkest." "After that first dismal season of win- ning five and losing five, I said to myself, 'Start counting your days in this job,'" Paterno recalled. Adding to the disenchantment within its fan community, Penn State began the 1967 season by giving up a last-minute touchdown pass in a 23-22 loss at Navy. Paterno decided after the game that he couldn't win with the upperclassmen Penn State had assembled, so the fol- lowing week at Miami (Fla.), he began subbing in a group of younger players, one or two at a time. The young defend- ers — linebackers Jim Kates and Dennis Onkotz, tackle Steve Smear and safety Neal Smith — helped pull off a 17-8 up- set over the Hurricanes in a muggy Or- ange Bowl, proving to Paterno that he had been right to gamble on a group of players he wasn't certain were ready for the spotlight. A week later, Penn State fell to UCLA, 17-15, in State College. But even in de- feat, the youthful Nittany Lions showed promise, keeping the No. 3 Bruins under wraps on offense before a special teams touchdown on a blocked punt helped the visitors avert an upset. Bruins quar- terback Gary Beban, who would go on to win the Heisman Trophy that year, said of PSU, "I don't think I've had to face a tougher pass rush." Penn State wouldn't lose again until nearly three years later. The Lions won their last seven regular-season games in Paterno's second season before tying Florida State, 17-17, in the Gator Bowl. In 1968 and '69, they went 11-0, finish- ing second in the AP poll both seasons. It was the start of Penn State's rise to the college football aristocracy. Follow The Money Franklin and his successor, Campbell, inherited a program that cherishes its history — the national championships, the Big Ten titles, the All-Americans, the NFL draftees. Franklin added a lot to that legacy, but only after getting off to a 7-6 start in 2014 that included a 2-6 mark in Big Ten play. Like Higgins, Franklin was handi- capped initially by circumstances be- yond his control. The NCAA had im- posed a range of sanctions in the wake of the Sandusky scandal that had gutted parts of PSU's roster, most notably the offensive line. Penn State surrendered 44 sacks in Franklin's first year and 39 in his second, when the Lions matched their 7-6 record from the season before. Then in Year 3, the first wave of Franklin recruits began making a major on-field impact, and suddenly the Lions were Big Ten champs again. He went on to tie Engle with 104 wins, though it was his 45 losses — 10 of which were to Ohio State — that came to define his tenure in the minds of many fans. More than a decade later, the sanc- tions are a distant memory, but Camp- bell is confronted with his own set of challenges. You can't build a roster these days without adequate NIL sup- port, and Penn State is not up there with Ohio State, Oregon, USC and the Big Ten's other high rollers. The Athletic estimated PSU's 2026 roster budget at $29-32 million, seventh highest in the conference and just above Wisconsin ($27-31 million). Those sorts of financial consider- ations will continue to shape Camp- bell's career at PSU, including whether he and his staff are able to ride out the first-season storm the way Bezdek, Higgins, Engle and Paterno survived theirs. Thirty-two million dollars might sound like a lot of money, but it isn't enough to weatherproof an entire foot- ball program. ■ Rip Engle came to Penn State from Brown, where he went 28-20-4. He coached the Nittany Lions to a 5-3-1 record in 1950, his debut season at PSU. PHOTO COURTESY PENN STATE ATHLETICS