Blue White Illustrated

I remember sitting in the intermittent rain and gloom in the lower east grand- stand near the 10-yard line as a stubborn 4-4 Maryland team almost upset the Nittany Lions. The Maryland defense stopped two potential Penn State touch- downs and a field goal in the first half, and as the third quarter started, the Lions held a shaky 7-0 lead. Those feisty Terps took the second-half kickoff and reached the Penn State 8-yard line be- fore White tipped a Dan Henning pass that Bauer intercepted. But Maryland forced a punt and drove for a field goal. The score was still 7-3 early in the fourth quarter with Maryland at the Penn State 7-yard line when White belted Henning as he was trying to throw to Alvin Blount in the flat. Linebacker Peter Curkendall grabbed the loose ball in front of Blount and ran 82 yards before being tackled short of the goal line. Penn State scored a touchdown, but the game was far from over. It finally came down to a two-point conversion in the last second that would have tied the score, knocking Penn State out of the probable championship game. White was part of the heavy rush that allowed linebacker Keith Karpinski to almost sack Henning, who had to throw the ball early. Cornerback Duffy Cobbs dived over the intended receiver and knocked the ball away, saving the 17-15 victory. White was selected defensive player of the game by the Penn State TV network, TCS. "It's been a while to remember all the specifics but I do remember Pete's inter- ception," White said. "I also remember ending up playing more snaps than usual. I think it was over 100 snaps. Whether it was my best game, I don't know because there are so many ways to describe best." Making his stand A week later, I was in South Bend among the 59,075 spectators, including then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, when White made another pair of clutch plays that prevented an upset. Notre Dame was a mediocre team, 4-4 at the time, under new head coach Lou Holtz, who had a history of upsetting Penn State while coaching at North Carolina State. Holtz had the Irish revved up, and the Lions held a slender 10-6 lead at halftime, with the Penn State touch- down coming at the end of a 78-yard drive after White and linebacker Don Graham had forced a Notre Dame fum- ble at the Lions' 18-yard line in the first quarter. Notre Dame had battled back in the second half, and with 1:14 left in the game and Penn State now leading 24-19, the Irish had a first-and-goal at the Lions' 6-yard-line. On first down, safety Ray Isom threw future Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown for a 3-yard loss on a pitchout. After a Notre Dame timeout, White, playing just inside Graham, who was close to the line, blasted past the Irish's right offensive tackle and sacked Beuerlein for a 9-yard loss. "That was a sight to see," raved the ABC-TV com- mentator when I watched the play re- cently on YouTube. Following another timeout, Beuerlein tried to hit the tight end crossing the goal line, but the end dropped the ball when hit by corner- back Gary Wilkerson. On fourth-and- 18, the defense forced Beuerlein to throw underneath to the tailback, whose knee touched the ground at the 13-yard line as three Lions surrounded him, and Penn State ran out the clock. "Bob White's sack was the big play," Conlan told reporters in the locker room, according to what I reread in John Black's Football Letter to alumni while writing this column. "He saved us. I think they were surprised we got it. But when we did, that put us up on them. We were at an emotional high." White vividly recalls the play, and after re-watching it on YouTube over the years he can describe it in minute detail, right down to the technique he used and the moves he made to set up, fool and bull past the offensive tackle. "The tackle was actually standing there with his face in his hands because he knew he had been had," White said. "When I got to Beuerlein, his eyes were bigger than saucers like [he was] saying, 'Where the heck did you come from?' because he was still backpeddling to get set when I got to him." '100 percent comfort level' South Bend and Beaver Stadium were a long way from the small migrant farm- ing town of Haines City southwest of Orlando where White grew up with seven siblings raised by their mother and grandmother. It was there in the fifth grade that he met the man who changed his life. Bob Eisenberg had moved from western Pennsylvania to get away from the Northern winters and found a job teaching school in Haines City. He took White under his wing in the classroom and on the playgrounds, but after a few years returned to his hometown of Freeport to teach and coach. Eisenberg kept in touch with White and his family, and as White was nearing his sophomore year in high school, Eisenberg asked the White family if he could become Bob's guardian and bring him north to get a better education and play football and other sports at Freeport High School. White's mother and grandmother agreed, believing there would be more challenges and better op- portunities in life for Bob than the ones he was experiencing in the impoverished area of Haines City. By the time White's senior football season was over in 1981, he had scholar- ship offers from Ohio State, Florida State, Georgia, South Carolina, Pitt and Penn State. What made him choose Penn State? "Joe and [assistant coach] Bob Phillips recruited me," White recalled. "It came down to a 100 percent comfort level. I knew it the first time I visited Penn State and met the coaches and administrators and some professors. It was a gut feel- ing, an instinct, seeing what I had expe- rienced; it was true, it was honest and it was forthright. No one in my family went to college. Given the fact I was running scared, that I was walking into an unfamiliar environment, I felt I was turning my wishes and dreams over to a group of people that had my best inter-

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