Cameron
Hart
revor Williams had barely 2nished
unpacking when the news broke
that Penn State, the university at
which he had just enrolled, was
about to receive the toughest football
sanctions since SMU's program was
shuttered back in the mid-1980s. The
Nittany Lions would still exist, but they
would be a shell of their former selves
for the next decade or so, maybe longer.
The NCAA would see to that. The only
consolation was that Williams would be
free to transfer anywhere without
penalty, as would all of his teammates.
"We were trying to 2gure out what we
were going to do," Williams recalled re-
cently. "We had just unpacked every-
thing and gotten settled into the dorms.
We went through a lot of adversity and
had to persevere through a lot."
In the end, Williams chose to stick it
out, mostly because he had focused so
intently on Penn State during his re-
cruitment that he couldn't imagine go-
ing anywhere else. He's now a senior
cornerback with 18 career starts to his
credit, and he has no regrets about his
decision to stay. "If I could go back and
change anything," he said, "I wouldn't."
When he talks about preparing for his
2nal season at Penn State, there are no
traces of the bunker mentality the Nit-
tany Lions were forced to adopt three
years ago in the a3ermath of the NCAA's
scholarship reductions and four-year
postseason ban. In 2012, the Lions' pre-
season goal was simply to have enough
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