Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/916653
think about that. It's highly unusual.' A little later in the afternoon he called me and said, 'Call [Nastasi's] dad and bring him over this weekend on a visit. I'm not making any promises. I'll just talk it over with him, but I'm not certain I'll make an offer. Let me think about it.'" That was on a Tuesday. The following Saturday morning, Kenney and both Nastasis sat down with Paterno in a Cor- ner Room booth where Paterno was sip- ping coffee. Kenney remembers Paterno saying to young Nastasi, "You know, Joe, this guy right here wants me to make you an offer to Penn State. We don't do that. That's unusual. It's not common practice to offer this early. But we know so much about you, Joe, I want to make you a firm offer to come to Penn State.' Joe jumped up and grabbed Coach Paterno around the neck and said, 'I'm coming to Penn State.' He committed on the spot, and that got the ball rolling." Nastasi recalls the moment, if not the details of the conversation. "I thought it was later, right at the end of my basketball season and closer to spring ball, but I could be wrong," he said. "I was so ex- cited. It was a dream come true." The next day, Paterno walked into Ken- ney's office and asked, "Do you have any more like that?" Kenney told him he would have a list on his desk in an hour. "The next time we had our recruiting meeting we had a pretty strong list, and that's when we began making early of- fers," Kenney recalled. "We did it for about two years before the rest of college football caught up with it. The nice thing is that when we went out in December as usual, we had practically our entire re- cruiting class committed." Ganter recalls a specific staff meeting after the third camp that Nastasi attended in the summer of 1992, prior to his junior season. "That's when we made up our minds we wanted him," Ganter said. "I remember being in a staff meeting right after that camp. Joe [Paterno] said, 'What are we waiting for? He's a great kid. His dad's a football coach. We all like him. We've seen him perform. What else are you guys looking for?' " Nastasi played five positions on the Northern Bedford football team, includ- ing quarterback, scoring a total of 72 ca- reer all-purpose touchdowns and was selected Pennsylvania's small-school Player of the Year by The Associated Press in his senior year. "He was an unbeliev- able athlete," Ganter said. "He ran a 4.5 or better and could catch the football. I went to see him play basketball at one point and saw him score 52 points." Nastasi also was a standout on his school's baseball team but had figured basketball would be his ticket to a major- college scholarship. "That was my best sport and I was less than 6-foot," he said. However, the opportunity to play for Paterno and Penn State was irre- sistible. "I was always such a huge fan of Penn State [football] and I would come up to games when I was younger. And then when I began getting national at- tention from a lot of East Coast schools – West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest – it was just an easy decision for me to commit to Penn State, a premier program. Back then, there weren't as many powerhouses as there are today. You probably had 10 schools that really dominated, and to be in that elite status [with Penn State] was such an honor for me." Penn State had marked him down as a wide receiver following those summer camps. By the third game of his redshirt sophomore year, he was lining up at flanker and for the next four years he was used as both a starter and spot recevier. He developed a reputation as someone who could be counted on in the clutch, but after 20 years his name cannot be found in the Penn State record book. 'It worked perfectly' However, Nastasi may be best known as the holder on extra points and field goals, helping Brett Conway and Travis Forney rank among the top six career scorers in school history. His hands were his most valuable asset. He rarely dropped a pass or muffed a center's snap on kicks. He made the play of his career as a holder on Nov. 18, 1995, against Michigan. A surprise snow storm four days before the game dumped nearly 18 inches of snow on University Park. An armada of Penn State employees, volunteers paid $5 an hour, and inmates from the nearby state prison cleared the snow from the field, seats and walkways in time for the game to be played, but mounds of snow still surrounded the field when they kicked off in subfreezing temperatures. Less than four minutes remained in the game with Penn State clinging to a 20-17 lead when Nastasi wrote himself into the Nittany Lions' football history books. A 58-yard run by tailback Stephen Pitts had given Penn State a first down on the Michigan 8-yard line, but three plays gained only 6 yards, and Paterno sent Conway and Nastasi into the game. Con- way had already booted field goals of 49 and 51 yards, and this was a chip shot for him. But even after the kick, Michigan could come back and win the game with a touchdown. Moments earlier on the sideline, Ganter told Nastasi he had the go-ahead to run the fake field goal play they had practiced all week. "We were going to call it at an earlier point in the game, at about the 30- yard line," Nastasi said, "but they jumped offside and gave us a first down." The fake depended on the way Michi- gan's defense lined up. If the Lions didn't see the formation they wanted, Nastasi would call off the fake with an audible and they would kick the field goal. "We had seen in the film that when they were going to try and block a field goal, they would overload the left side with two or three guys and one guy over the center so that they could shoot the gap," Nastasi said. "It was there right away." Nastasi kneeled down and his eyes quickly surveyed the Michigan defense. He knew instantly what he had to do. He called out the signal, took the snap from center Keith Conlin and darted over right tackle virtually untouched for a touch- down. "I just picked the ball up and walked in," he remembered. "This time it worked perfectly. No one touched me. That was the most famous play of my ca- reer and it was the easiest one of my ca- reer. Anyone could have done it."