Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/541265
2 0 1 5 P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L the '05 game. That one really hurt, be- cause it ruined a perfect season and perhaps a shot at another national championship. And how could any of us who were there forget the "Snow Bowl" in mid- November of 1995 when an unexpected 18-inch snowfall limited parking and forced spectators to sit in shivering tem- peratures with snow all around them? At least the "good guys" won that one, with holder Joe Nastasi scoring on a fake field goal. However, that's not what I remember most that day. Carole and I had sold our home in Virginia and had driven to State College earlier in the week to start look- ing for a new home. We began waiting along Porter Road at 6 a.m. for the park- ing lots to open and heard sportscaster Jerry Fisher talking on the radio about the hazardous conditions he had experi- enced driving in from his home in the Stormstown area. We had never heard of Stormstown, but that grabbed our at- tention. A couple of weeks later, we found our dream home not far from Stormstown – in a rural area about 14 miles southwest of Beaver Stadium – and we lived happily there until this summer when we moved to State Col- lege. I still wonder if we would have dis- covered that house if we hadn't heard Jerry talk about Stormstown that morn- ing. There is one other Michigan memory I want to share. It did not involve a game with the Wolverines but occurred at the 1996 Kickoff Classic against USC. We were sitting in the Penn State section at Giants Stadium, and a few seats away were two couples in their 20s wearing USC jerseys. They were the only Tro- jans fans in the area and they began ir- ritating the Penn State fans from the time they arrived, with their derogatory remarks, booing, taunting, etc. Early in the game, I turned around and asked them why they weren't sitting with the rest of the USC fans. "Oh, we're not from USC," they told me. "We're Michigan fans. We cheer against all the other Big Ten teams." That's when I re- alized the Big Ten I knew in the 1970s was far different than the Big Ten of the Penn State era. Unfortunately, that twisted philosophy of rooting for Big Ten opponents is prevalent throughout the conference. In 1990, I had one other strong con- nection with a third Big Ten school, In- diana. My daughter and son-in-law graduated from IU and turned me into a fan of Hoosiers basketball and coach Bob Knight. But Indiana's infamous vis- it to Rec Hall on Feb. 9, 1993, in which it went into the game ranked No. 1 and walked away with a controversial 88-84 double-overtime victory, is not one of my memorable Big Ten moments. Ref- eree Sam Lickliter blew a crucial call with the Lions on the verge of a major upset, but I didn't see the game and I don't remember reading or hearing much about it in the Washington, D.C., media. When Penn State's football team began competing in the conference later that fall, I was surprised to learn that Indi- ana, Michigan and Northwestern were among the four Big Ten teams the Nit- tany Lions had never played before. The other team was Minnesota. I remembered several Penn State games prior to 1993 against Ohio State, Michigan State and Iowa, as well as games against Purdue, Illinois and Wisconsin. What I didn't realize until writing my first book was that the school's first game with a future Big Ten opponent was at Ohio State in 1912. That game ended in a controver- sial forfeit when the heavily favored Buckeyes walked off the field in the fourth quarter because they were get- ting physically beaten up and were los- ing, 37-0. Additional major upsets over Ohio State followed in 1956 and '64, and by the time they met in their first Big Ten game in 1993, Penn State had won six of eight games with the Buck- eyes. That 1993 game in the dreary late-Oc- tober swirling snow and mud at Colum- bus was a portent of things to come in the Ohio State series, which is now owned by the Buckeyes, 17-13. The Nit- tany Lions were thoroughly beaten, 24- 6, and we fans who were there were ha- rassed continually by the Ohio State fans, another revelation of how the at- mosphere on the road would be far dif- ferent in the Big Ten than it had been as an Eastern Independent. Nothing was more gratifying to fans like me than the rematch the following year, in which Penn State demolished Ohio State, 63-14, on a sunny Home- coming afternoon at Beaver Stadium. What I remember most was not the game itself but being introduced to the family of the Buckeyes' losing quarter- back, Bobby Hoying, in a nearby restau- rant after the game. Carole and I enter- tained two close friends from Dayton that weekend, Art and Ethel Brown, and they knew the Hoyings. They said we just had to meet the "nice, friendly" Hoying family. Let's just say it didn't go well, and if looks could kill, I wouldn't be writing these words. I could fill a column just with my memories of Ohio State games, some much more unpleasant than the Hoy- ing encounter, including clashes with other Prato family members who are big-time Buckeye fans. When it comes to Ohio State, I'm still a Michigan fan, even though my dislike for the arro- gant Michigan followers is just behind the Buckeye horde and some Iowa ya- hoos. We had our first taste of unpleasant- ness in Kinnick Stadium in the second game of the 1993 season, but it was worse in 2008 when Iowa upset the Li- ons with a field goal on the last play of the game. That was the longest ride home for Carole and me. We hurried out of the stadium seconds after the field goal and didn't stop except for fuel until we checked into a hotel in Elkhart, Ind., after 1 a.m. The frustrating loss to Iowa that night almost equaled Minnesota's Hail Marys and winning field goal in the last two minutes that knocked then-No. 2 Penn State out of national championship contention in mid-November 1999 at