Blue White Illustrated

it Beaver Stadium to fill one of those openings. "We anticipated this game for two years because it was on our schedule as freshman and we were excited about it," Tom O'Brien recalled recently. "The entire team traveled, which is not always the case, so we brought 100 or so guys. We had three buses and we left Provi- dence on Thursday and stopped [overnight] somewhere along the way, but I don't remember where. We ate at a family-style restaurant with a buffet and we were in our jacket and ties, and I remember a couple of older couples asking us who we were. We kind of proudly said, 'We're the Brown Univer- sity football team, and we're on the way to play Penn State.' This one man says, 'You guys look pretty small to be playing Penn State,' and we all laughed." When the players arrived at Beaver Stadium Friday afternoon to practice, they couldn't believe what they were seeing. "There already were hundreds of RVs and campers already there for the game," Tom said. "We weren't al- lowed to practice inside the stadium but we did work out in our sweats and shells on a field outside the stadium. When we pulled in the next morning, there must have been a thousand or more RVs. At least it seemed like it. There were probably more RVs there than we get in total people [in the grandstands] for one of our games." In the locker room later, other Brown players recalled the atmosphere. "What shocked us when we arrived was all those campers," fullback Steve Heffer- nan told reporters. "We kid about tail- gating at Brown, but we've never seen anything like that. Beaver Stadium felt like a pro stadium to me, and this was like an exhibition game or something." Brown middle guard John Daniel said, "It was kind of like a big party. It's fun if that's what it's all about around here." Among the 5,000 or so Brown fans at- tending the party were John and Anne O'Brien of Andover, Mass. John had let- tered at Brown in 1953-54, but he and his wife were there primarily to watch their middle son, Tom, a 20-year-old, 6-foot-1, 205-pound junior reserve linebacker. Their oldest son, Jack, 24, who also had graduated from Brown but didn't play football, was a law stu- dent at Suffolk and had stayed home to be with their youngest son, Bill. "I was 14 and in the eighth grade and was playing a game for my junior high school that day," Bill recalled recent- ly. "I remember my parents telling me all about it and what a great time they had, even though Brown lost." Beaver Stadium was sold out for the 1 o'clock game, but instead of an ex- pected crowd of 84,670, an estimated 75,000 were there for the kickoff. Perhaps that was because of the pedi- gree of the Lions' Ivy League opponent and/or the blustery, 37-degree weath- er that included spotty rain, hail and the first snow showers of the year. One witty Brown player said after the game that there were "almost as many no-shows" as Brown's average atten- dance for its home games. "I remember we had a state police es- cort from our hotel to the stadium be- fore the game, which was very unusu- al for Brown," Tom O'Brien recalled with a laugh. "When we got off the bus- es, there were fans along both sides of the walkway and we knew this was for real. But the most unusual thing I re- member is when we got into the vis- iting [team's] locker room, I kept thinking the strangest thing – that [Pitt's] Tony Dorsett and [Navy's] Roger Staubach and players like that once dressed in this locker room. And we all looked at each other and said, 'We're in the same locker room where those guys got dressed and played.' " Obviously, Penn State was a heavy fa- vorite and looked like it in the first quar- ter. The Lions methodically drove 62 yards on seven plays for a 31-yard touchdown by senior fullback Jonathan Williams with 4:42 gone in the quarter. Less than three minutes later, Williams ran 61 yards for another touchdown, and with 1:44 remaining in the first pe- riod, Nick Gancitano kicked a 47- yard field goal to climax a 47-yard drive, giving Penn State a 17-0 lead. "Our kids were in awe in the first five, six minutes," Brown coach John An- derson, then in his 11th season, told reporters later. "Then they settled down and played good defense against a very great team. ... Someone said to me that this was like Custer's Last Stand – but we had a much better game plan than Custer." That they did. In the second quarter, Brown's defense clamped down on the Lions, giving up only 19 yards, while the offense controlled the ball for nearly 12 minutes, gaining 175 yards and scoring an 11-yard touchdown on a run by quarterback Joe Potter at the end of an eight-play, 64-yard drive with 6:40 before halftime. "When we got up 17-0, everybody seemed to sit back and say, 'Who we play next week?' " Paterno told writers after the game. After a halftime lecture from the coach, Penn State scored on a 55-yard reverse by Kenny Jackson on its first possession of the second half. Five minutes later, freshman tailback D. J. Dozier took a pitchout and ran 44 yards for a 31-7 lead. Everyone seemed to relax after that, and there was no more scoring until the fourth quarter when Penn State scored after a 10-play, 53-yard drive with 12:25 left. Brown then added two touchdowns against the Lions' re- serves to make the final score a re- spectable 38-21. "We played pretty well, and the whole team can [leave] holding our heads up high," said Joe Potter, a Brown co-captain along with Daniel. Brown actually had more first downs, 22-16, and possession time, 31:29, while the net rushing and passing yards were almost even: 304-311 rushing and 106-113 passing in favor of Penn State. "It was a challenge just to see how good we are," said Brown tailback Jamie Potkul, who gained 93 yards on 15 carries. "We are never going to play against that type of competition again in our lives. Even though we lost, I thought we did a pretty good job against them." So, did Bill O'Brien's older brother make a tackle on a kickoff? Maybe. "I usually played on kickoffs and re- turns and then was the third line- backer," Tom recalled. "But I had separated my shoulder for the second year in a row, and this was my first game back since separating my shoul- der earlier in the season. So I played on kickoff returns but was a backup on the kickoffs. But I remember some- body got hurt on the kickoff team and I played maybe one or two kickoffs." There are two videos in the Paterno- Pattee Library Sports Archives: the of- ficial game film shot by John Palmgren, Photo courtesy of Paterno-Pattee Library Archives JOHN ANDERSON BROWN COACH "Someone said to me this was like Custer's Last Stand – but we had a much better game plan than Custer. " the team's chief football video coordi- nator from 1977 to 2007, and a DVD from the delayed telecast by TCS of Pittsburgh. In that era, when few games were televised live, TCS pro- duced an edited "live" version of the game that was later syndicated throughout the East. Both videos were shot primarily by a camera atop the press box, although TCS had sev- eral other cameras for close-ups and replays. Because the press box side was (and still is) the sideline for the op- posing team, the numbers on the back of the Brown players' jerseys can be seen throughout the game, but their last names above the numbers are sometimes difficult to read. Brown had seven kickoff returns and four kickoffs. Tom wore No. 59, and on the return team he was positioned about 10 yards in front of the two re- turn men. He can be clearly seen in five returns. But the video angles on two returns were limited: On the third re- turn, the Brown runner accidentally stepped out of bounds at the Brown 2- yard line, while the fourth return was downed in the end zone. In at least two of the returns, Tom was in the thick of trying to make a hole for the Brown runner. In the re- turn after Jackson's game-breaking 30 Historian Lou Prato is the author of many books about Penn State sports. His latest book is "Game Changers: The Greatest Plays in Penn State Football History." A P R I L 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M

• Cover