he first Penn State football
game I can vividly remember
watching was the 1979 Sugar
Bowl in which the Nittany Li-
ons lost to Alabama, 14-7. I
remember the important stuff
– Mike Guman getting
stopped short of the end zone by Barry
Krauss on fourth-and-goal in the fourth
quarter – and even the unimportant
stuff, like the fact that the Lions wore
white shoes, a break with tradition that
seemed like blasphemy even to a 14-
year-old kid.
The Sugar Bowl wasn't the first Penn
State game I'd ever seen. Back then, the
big games would air live and the lesser
ones appeared on Sunday mornings
when the highlight show aired, and I
caught a bunch of them. I'd even seen a
game live in Beaver Stadium in the mid-
1970s. But the Alabama game is the one
that stays with me all these years later.
That's because it was the one that mat-
tered most. It was a bowl game against a
team from a distant part of the country
with the national championship at
stake.
Bowl games aren't always so momen-
tous, of course. Of the 44 bowls in
which the Nittany Lions have played
over the years, only four have been for
the national title. But from the late
1960s to the end of the century – the
glory years of the Paterno era, essen-
tially – most Penn State football sea-
sons began with title aspirations, some
more realistic than others. If the Nit-
T
J U D G M E N T C A L L
Game
of chance
NCAA's decision
allows Penn State
to once again
dream big
