Blue White Illustrated

A fitting honor for a legend with Penn State ties T he man considered the greatest of- fensive line coach ever in college football is a former Penn State play- er virtually unknown to Nittany Lion fans who gained fame as the guru for Penn State's most historic adversary, Pitt. Joe Moore is so revered that a new award saluting the nation's best colle- giate offensive line has been named for him and will be given for the first time at the end of this season. Finally, an award for those offensive guards, tackles and centers who work together to open the holes for the run- ning backs and prevent their quarter- back from being sacked and rarely are noticed themselves until they screw up, as when they miss a block or get caught holding. Moore spent eight years coaching the offensive lines at Pitt, two years at Tem- ple and another nine years at Notre Dame from 1980-96. He groomed 52 of his players for the NFL, including guard Russ Grimm of Pitt, the only member of the renowned Washington Redskins Su- per Bowl offensive lines of the 1980s nicknamed "The Hogs" to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "When God decided to create a foot- ball coach he created Joe Moore, then broke the mold," declares another of Moore's Pitt pupils, tackle Jimbo Covert, in a testimonial on the website of the or- ganization that is sponsoring the new award, the Joe Moore Foundation for Teamwork. "He had a unique way of pushing you beyond even your own ex- pectations and then took great pride in seeing you succeed." When Covert was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2001, he publicly credited Moore, saying, "I owe everything to [him]." What may surprise many readers just learning about this admired offensive line sage is that Joe Moore never played on the offensive line in his scholastic or collegiate career. Furthermore, how in Joe Paterno's name did he wind up deep in the heinous Panther lair, of all places? This is where I get personal, because I knew Joe Moore when we were both at Penn State in the late 1950s and he was a friend. I lost track of him for years, even while he was coaching at Pitt, and then around 1999 or 2000 I invited him to my tailgate at Beaver Stadium, and he ac- cepted. But he never made it, as you will read later. I have often thought of that missed opportunity to renew our friend- ship and to hear that familiar gravelly voice tell me what happened since those youthful years at Penn State, with our destinies ahead of us. What I had forgotten was that when I was in the ninth grade in Indiana High School in 1951, 50 miles from Pittsburgh, Moore was a highly recruited running back at Pittsburgh's Schenley High School. Of the dozens of scholarship of- fers he received, he chose the University of Tennessee. But the native of the gritty steel mill atmosphere of Pittsburgh could not adjust to the laid-back, ole- boy nature of the South. After one year he transferred to Penn State, primarily to play football. Academics and studying were not then part of Moore's lifestyle, and within a year he joined the Army. The military woke him, and made him realize he not only wanted to play football but eventu- ally be a teacher and a coach. Two years later Moore was back at Penn State, and that's where he met the man who would become his best friend in life, Dan Radakovich. Radakovich was another kid from the Pittsburgh area, a little younger with similar roots and temperament and was already a starting linebacker. They roomed together during preseason prac- tice in 1956 when the team stayed at the now-defunct Phi Delta Theta fraternity house, a short stroll from Beaver Field. A team photo in the 1957 La Vie year- book shows Moore in the back row with the sophomores, wearing jersey No. 43, second man from the left. Standing to the right of Moore in the photo are two sophomores who I knew well because they had lived near me in McKee Hall during our freshman year. Dick Dill is next to Joe and then Steve Garban. Yes, the same Steve Garban who would go on to become Penn State's chief fi- nancial officer and subsequently the president of the board of trustees when coach Joe Paterno was fired 55 years lat- er. Radakovich, who would also achieve fame as the father of Linebacker U after coaching Penn State linebackers from 1957 through '69, is in the middle of the front row of the photo, wearing jersey No. 51. "We were a lot alike," Radakovich not- ed in his 2013 autobiography that I helped him write, "Bad Rad: Football Nomad." "Joe was a few years older than me but a little crazy like me, and had once been temporarily suspended from the team for punching a teammate. Joe was a reserve halfback in '56, and in our third game of the season against Holy Cross, he hurt his back so severely he could no longer play football." Moore turned to baseball in the spring of 1958 to use up his athletic eligibility in his junior year. He was the starting cen- ter fielder, batting sixth (with an average of about .210) and helped the Lions make it to the NCAA playoffs in Omaha before losing and finishing with a 14-5

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