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WELCOME BACK
A former member
of the freshman team,
Ganter became
the squad's coach
in 1973.
Photo courtesy of the Paterno Pattee Library Archives
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F
reshmen are such an integral part of
Penn State's football team nowadays
that most of today's fans have no
memory of the era dating back to
1915 when freshmen were ineligible
for the varsity and played on a separate
team against such varsity rivals as Pitt,
Syracuse and West Virginia. Even when
freshmen became eligible during the 1940s
because of World War II and then permanently after 1972, there were junior
varsity teams for 11 seasons.
The last freshman team played in 1976,
and the coach was Fran Ganter, who went
on to become Penn State's offensive coordinator and recently retired after
spending the past 10 years as the associate
athletic director for football. The freshman team was immediately replaced in
1977 by a JV team, and the coach was a
young administrative assistant named
Tim Curley. By the time Penn State's
junior varsity played its last game in
1983, Curley was the assistant (and future
successor) to athletic director Jim Tarman.
Both Ganter and Curley had played on
the freshman teams, Ganter in 1967 and
Curley in 1973 in Ganter's first year as
head coach of the squad. Ganter remembers
his freshman games but Curley doesn't.
"We played what people called the top
recruiting class in Pitt history," Ganter
recalled, "with Lloyd Weston and Ralph
Cindrich and so many other big-name
guys, and they came up here and we beat
