Blue White Illustrated

ob White is Penn State's most un- derrated defensive end of all time. You may disagree with this state- ment, but it's based on some 20 years of immersing myself into the sports history of the Nittany Lions and especially the football team. Before 1996, all I knew about Bob White was from watching him on the field in the early and mid-1980s. As a fan sitting in the stands or glued to my television set, I saw how integral he was as part of the Nittany Lions' defenses in 1985 and '86 that played for the national championship. I also realized he was overshadowed by several defensive teammates, particularly two first-team All-Americans, linebacker Shane Con- lan and defensive tackle Tim Johnson, as well as the contentious, somewhat flam- boyant linebacker Trey Bauer. To this day, I vividly remember the biggest play of White's career. That was a sack of Notre Dame quarterback Steve Beuerlein on a goal-line stand as time was running out in the dreary late after- noon cold at South Bend in mid-No- vember 1986. That stop helped preserve a 24-19 victory and kept the Lions in the running for the national championship game. More on that play later, but it was illustrative of White throughout his ca- reer, a guy who just did his job, game in and game out, with a big clutch play when it counted most. Penn State did not begin officially keeping track of sacks until the 1975 sea- son, and when he graduated, White was tied with teammate (and linebacker) Don Graham in career sacks at No. 7 with 18. He and Graham are still tied in the record book, but they're now at No. 12, with Courtney Brown (33), and Larry Kubin (30) at the top. While writing my first book, the Penn State Football Encyclopedia, in the late 1990s, I came to appreciate White even more. In my research, I was reminded of what I had seen for myself from 1983 through '86 when he was one of the starting defensive ends. Technically, White was frequently listed as a tackle in Penn State's 3-4-4 defensive alignment, which had three men on the line with a linebacker, usually Graham, playing close to the line at one end. But over his five years, White was really an end, and that's the way he was defined in the Penn State media guides. A year after the encyclopedia was pub- lished in the fall of 1998, Blue White Il- lustrated asked me to write a series selecting the best players in the history of Penn State football at each position. White was my choice for No. 8 at defen- sive end, with only three other players from the Paterno era ahead of him – Bruce Bannon at No. 4 and Kubin and Brown tied at No. 5 – and one other Pa- terno player behind him: No. 10 Walker Lee Ashley. What made it challenging to compile such a list of all-time players at each po- sition, then and now, is that most col- lege football players had to play both offense and defense prior to the 1965 season, when a rule change imple- mented unrestricted substitution. Thus, the first three players on my all-time defensive end list in 1999 were men who were also receivers and blockers, more like the tight ends of today. So, the de- fensive ends I chose in 1999 were more proficient on defense, while I also se- lected some two-way ends before 1965 whose strength was on offense for my 1999 list of tight ends. In revising that defensive end list to go along with this column, I still have White in the top 10 because of what he meant to those two great teams of 1985 and '86. Frankly, I don't think he gets the credit he deserves from most of today's Penn State fans, in part because many did not see him play and also because he is now more familiar as the man in charge of the private suites and Mount Nittany Club at Beaver Stadium. Challenged by the very best Even the most diehard Nittany Lions fans may not remember that White was a co-captain of that 1986 national championship team, along with Conlan, quarterback John Shaffer and fullback Steve Smith. He also was one of the 15 fifth-year seniors that year who were true freshmen on the 1982 champi- onship team. They did everything the other players did except play in a game, and they were in uniform in New Or- leans when Penn State beat Georgia. "We [and the veterans] bought into the fact that we could help each other achieve everything that we both want," White told me in a recent interview in his Beaver Stadium office. "That's really what came out of [1982]. Part of the re- cruiting process that attracted me to Penn State was if you want to be the best at what you do, that means being the best student-athlete possible. Where better to do that than at an institution where you're going to be challenged and pushed to grow each and every day by the very best? So, every day in practice you're going against some of the best athletes in the country, and you can't help but get better. They, in turn, are getting better because they're going against some of the best athletes, too. We watched guys like Curt Warner, Todd Blackledge, Kenny Jackson, and the list goes on and on. We challenged them. We were growing and maturing and they were getting better." H I S T O R Y White still lays it on the line for Penn State B

• Cover