Blue White Illustrated

was a two-man thing with Jim and Joe going to various media outlets in Pennsylvania for the purpose of get- ting Joe exposure, mostly in print and television, but also some radio," Fisher said. "They would go to Pitts- burgh and try to get the guy on KDKA-TV to do a piece and then go to Philly and Harrisburg and so forth and do the same thing. But that's really all I remember because I wasn't associated with the [football] program yet. "There wasn't any gathering for fans then. But as the years went by, there would be a troop of Penn State peo- ple who would go to golf outings. There was a Joe Paterno Open golf tournament in York and in Pitts- burgh and in Doylestown, where Joe always had a press conference that afternoon and then spoke to the men and women at a banquet in the evening. Occasionally, some of the other coaches and other people in the athletic department would go along. So we had three 'caravans' like that, and they went on for several years. But those didn't start until after Jim and Joe went that first time." Ernie Accorsi recalls seeing one of the interviews Joe did during the original 1966 trip on Lancaster tel- evision station WGAL. Accorsi, now retired after a long career in an NFL front-office executive, has a unique perspective because of his direct tie to the O'Brien caravan. Accorsi did not know Paterno or Tarman in 1966, but Tarman told him all about the trip when he hired Accorsi in 1969 as Penn State's assistant sports information director. Then on May 9 of this year, Accorsi was among ap- proximately 350 people inside a midtown Manhattan hotel when the Coaches Caravan made its 10th stop for an evening reception. "I remember visiting my parents in Hershey that summer in 1966, and, religiously, my father watched Chan- nel 8 News every night at 6 and 11, and Dave Brandt was the sports guy for a thousand years," Accorsi said. "Sports comes on and he's got this filmed interview with Joe Paterno, who's in his short sleeves, white tie. The interview couldn't have been longer than two minutes, and I re- member being impressed. This guy just caught my attention. He wasn't 32 J U N E 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 just a football coach like the cliché. There was something about him that was magnetic. "Then when I went to work there I asked Jim about that trip, and he told me all about it. They went everywhere – Lancaster, too, not just Philadelphia and Harrisburg. I know they had these press briefin- gs with the print media, and he hit every one of those television stations, and I recall it because it had an im- pact on me. "Essentially, it's what they're doing now. It's just an early-day version of it. And no one ever did that. I never saw anything like that before. Not only was it a novel and creative con- cept, but you put Joe in that environ- ment. Joe not only had charisma, the give and take, and a personality, but the knowledge about things besides football." Accorsi does not remember whether the Paterno caravan made it to New York City. He has lived there since 1994 when he became assistant gen- eral manager of the New York Giants, retiring in 2007 after spending 10 years as the team's general manager. So, when the O'Brien caravan sched- uled a stop at the Sheraton New York Hotel, Accorsi wasn't going to miss it. "I was thinking of the Tarman-Pa- terno junket, because we're in this slick room with screens all over the place and sound effects and acoustics and all this modernized lighting, and [O'Brien] does a Power- Point presentation, and I'm thinking, can you imagine Joe doing this?" Ac- corsi said with a laugh. "If you said to Joe, 'I think we're going to have to do a PowerPoint,' he wouldn't have any idea what you're talking about." Accorsi was impressed with O'Brien and the PowerPoint presentation. "He was in command and authorita- tive," Accorsi said. It was a success- ful evening, Accorsi said. Yet he still can't help thinking of the success Tarman and Paterno had with their "suitcase" caravan. "Jim had an enormous amount of impact on Joe's early success," Ac- corsi said, "and he knew exactly what to do, right from the start. Jim de- serves credit for a tremendous per- centage of Joe's [eventual] popular- ity. He did everything the right way. But that junket was ingenious." RICH SCARCELLA B L U E W H I T E C O N T R I B U T O R O'Brien goes the extra mile O'Brien? What's he like?" That's part of the reason why O O'Brien felt compelled to embark on the 18-stop Penn State Coaches Caravan in late April and May. He wanted alumni and fans to get to know him and what he's all about. "I want them to know that I'm in charge of a football program that's part of a great athletic program that is part of a very special university," O'Brien said in Philadelphia at the first stop. "I want them to know that my staff and I are going to work ex- tremely hard to continue the tradi- tion of winning football games and graduating players. "I want them to know that we be- lieve in the same things they believe in. I want them to know that we're going to work extremely hard to make them very proud of this pro- gram." He laid out the four building blocks of his program — academics, football, integrity and respect – at each stop, but there was so much more behind the goodwill tour than that. O'Brien sought to assure fans that he wouldn't deviate from the princi- ples of his predecessor. The leg- endary Joe Paterno's teams won a Division I-record 409 games, two national championships and three Big Ten titles in his 46 seasons as head coach before he was fired in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. School officials also hoped that the omnipresence of O'Brien on the car- avan would increase season football ticket sales, which are lagging after the Sandusky scandal and the im- plementation of the STEP ticket pro- gram. Mostly, though, O'Brien sought to continue the healing process and send a message that the university ver the past few months Penn State alumni and fans have often asked, "What do you think of Bill in general and the football team in particular are trying to move for- ward after one of the worst scandals in college sports history. "I don't know anything about dark clouds," he said. "All I know about is blue skies." Surprisingly, though, O'Brien was rarely asked about the scandal dur- ing the question-and-answer ses- sions at each stop. Most folks want- ed to know about the football team, such as Paul Jones' future, Devon Smith's status, Khairi Fortt's spring injury and Bill Belton's move to run- ning back. O'Brien endeared himself to the alums and fans when he said he wouldn't change Penn State's trade- mark helmets and uniforms and wouldn't put names on the jerseys. "Why in the world would you change those uniforms?" he said. He also received warm receptions when he said he wanted to schedule a marquee nonconference game each season and perhaps play more games at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., or FedEx Field in Landover, Md. O'Brien understands that he's liv- ing and working in a fishbowl, that every word he utters and every move he makes will be scrutinized. He's been criticized for allowing his players to wear facial hair, something prohibited by Paterno. He's been criticized for not wearing a jacket and tie at the Blue-White Game. O'Brien hasn't tried to be Paterno; he's clearly his own man, which is a good thing. But that hasn't kept him from often paying homage to Paterno, who died in January of complications from lung cancer. "I don't ever think about replacing Joe Paterno because no one will ever replace Joe Paterno," he said. "Nobody in the history of this game will replace him. I give a ton of re- spect and credit to him. We're just W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M

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