Men in White: The Gutsy, Against-All-Odds Return of Penn State Football
By Chris Raymond
St. Martin's Press; hardcover, 284 pages plus one 16-page color photo insert; $32.00; available today, Tuesday, August 13th
Chris Raymond has covered sports, politics, and pop culture for 30 years. Most of his career was spent in longtime roles at ESPN. He also has been on staff and written and edited for Details, Esquire, and GQ.
Penn State was the gold standard of college football for decades, with Coach Joe Paterno at the helm and their vintage navy blue and white uniforms. In an instant, it all came down on November 5, 2011, when the crimes of assistant Jerry Sandusky were revealed, and what followed was months of turmoil in which everything we knew about Penn State was questioned, especially if the program could continue.
In the new book, Men in White: The Gutsy, Against-All-Odds Return of Penn State Football, Raymond opens the story in 2012 with when the NCAA saddled the players with crippling sanctions, and chronicles how they revived the program, up until their win in the 2016 Big Ten Championship Game.
The moment one could feel the program turning was in 2014, Head Coach James Franklin's first year at the helm, and they earned their first bowl game appearance since the scandal broke. They appeared in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, and the game sold out in a record thirty-six hours. Facing off against Boston College in a thriller, Penn state won it in overtime, and as this reporter in attendance remembers it, a cathartic celebration followed, as the players went on top of the baseball dugouts to celebrate with their fans.
Raymond highlights the heroism of the players who dedicated themselves to preserving Paterno's "success with honor" ideal, as they suffered humbling losses, numerous coaching changes before Franklin's now decade-long tenure, and the relentless criticism from the public. They persisted through five seasons - which is relatively fast considering how low the program was in 2011 - to bring it back to prominence.
This book is told in an oral history-style format with players including running back Saquon Barkley, who played for the Giants from 2018 through last season; quarterback Christian Hackenberg, who was drafted by the Jets in 2016; John Urschel, Carl Nassib, and Trace McSorley.
Raymond documents how these players had to fight off efforts by many coaches to bring them into rival schools as they attempted to poach the roster, embraced the stirring words of a Navy SEAL, worked to accept the ever-changing coaching strategies, rebounded from heart-breaking losses, and overcame scholarship reduction with talent that was overlooked along the way.
Two of the biggest wins that really showed Penn State was back, and which each earned a chapter, include when they beat Michigan in four overtimes in 2013 and perhaps the biggest moment, an epic fourth-quarter comeback over Ohio State in 2016. The latter win was on their way to winning the Big Ten Championship over Wisconsin, the one Raymond contends removed the stain on the program that many felt never would go away.
Raymond writes of how crucial the players' commitment was to Penn State in the summer of 2012 to the program's future: "He was driving back to campus when the phone call arrived.
It was the strength coach, warning him to be prepared for the following morning.
Bad news was on the way.
For Michael Mauti, this was not a surprise, even in the tranquility of summer break. The world he once knew had been crumbling around him for months. It had started with the arrest of Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State coach charged on November 5, 2011, with forty counts of child molestation, and unfolded in seismic waves that rocked the leafy campus, unseating the university president, the athletic director, and head coach Joe Paterno - devastating the football program he had erected and studiously maintained over half a century.
The horrific details of Sandusky's crime spree had shaken the American public to its core, fueling round-the-clock discussion on cable news programs, talk radio, and social media forums in every corner of the country.
When Bill O'Brien arrived from the National Football League's New England Patriots in January to replace Paterno, it was supposed to signal a fresh start. But here was Mauti, the team's star linebacker, returning to campus from a friend's home in Youngstown, Ohio - days before fall practice was to begin for the 2012 season - and the fault lines were rumbling again.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association, college football's governing body, was preparing to spring into action against the school. The organization could not pin a single infraction from its voluminous rule book on a Penn State player or coach, so it had dipped into its constitution to address the university's lapse in judgement - a failure to alert law enforcement officials - when confronted with an eyewitness account of Sandusky's criminal behavior. Penn State would be penalized for failing to uphold the 'fundamental values' of civility, honesty, and responsibility.
What did that mean? No one knew for sure. The NCAA and Penn State's new president had jockeyed for weeks over a suitable explanation and punishment. A state representative would later uncover internal emails suggesting the NCAA's executives were simply hoping to bluff their way to some form of punitive action. And so, when Mauti and his teammates, who were barely in kindergarten when Sandusky last coaches at Penn State, finally gathered in the players' lounge on July 23, 2012, to hear the NCAA's ruling, they were braced for more turmoil, but they had no clue how severe things would get.
The group watched on TV as NCAA president Mark Emmert stepped to a lectern in a black suit coat, white shirt, and oddly muted tie and somberly issued his verdict. He started with a $60 million fine and added a four-year ban from postseason bowl games, a drastic reduction in scholarships, and an edict that instantly erased 111 victories from the team's all-time total (dropping Paterno from first to fifth in the NCAA's record books). And then Emmert did something no one in the program saw coming: He released the players from all obligations to the school.
On the surface, the gesture seemed noble. It allowed the players - every last one - to walk away from the scandal and the sanctions scot-free. Each could select a new team at a new school and start over, no questions asked. But in reality it created a feeding frenzy.
Within minutes, rival coaches were ringing the players' phones, vying to lure them away from the program. 'It was open season,' said star running back Silas Redd. 'Everybody was getting hit up.'
Before long, zealous recruiters were walking the streets, camped out in restaurants, knocking on apartment doors to pitch their programs. They phoned players' parents, high school coaches, roommates, and girlfriends - anyone who might give them an in.
For the players, many less than three years removed from high school, it was a shock. When the day began, they were united as a team; now each was on his own - fighting off advances from grown men with no scruples. Many of the authority figures they had known and trusted were gone, dismissed in the wake of Paterno's departure. And, because it was midsummer, there were few school officials on hand to guide them through the madness.
'What are you guys hearing?' asked strength coach Craig Fitzgerald when Mauti reported to the training facility with his roommate Michael Zordich the following morning. Both had awakened to a flood of voicemails and text messages from recruiters.
The three men started scribbling names on yellow legal pads, working the phones to figure out what remained of the team - who was entertaining thoughts of leaving. They feared they wouldn't have enough bodies to host a practice, much less a Big Ten Conference game.
Mauti and Zordich, both sons of former Penn State players, had decided to stay at the university. Determined to prevent a mass exodus, they took the extraordinary step of issuing a players-only statement on ESPN.
They tried crafting the words on paper but elected to speak off the cuff. The message had come from the heart. 'We weren't speaking for us,' said Zordich. 'We were speaking for anybody who ever had anything to do with Penn State.'
On July 25, 2012, trailed by more than two dozen teammates, the two seniors strode from the weight room to the practice field, inched up to a TV camera, and side by side vowed to hold the team together, calling on fellow students, alumni, lettermen, and fans to rally for the cause. 'This program was not built by one man,' said Mauti. 'And this program sure as hell is not going to be torn down by one man.'
The event lasted less than three minutes, but the sentiment behind it rippled across the next five seasons, resulting in one of the most incredible comebacks in sports history. It was a grueling journey, both physically and emotionally. The players would suffer embarrassing setbacks against Ohio and Temple and longtime rivals like Ohio State and Michigan and undergo yet another unexpected coaching change midway through their ascent. But they never lost heart."
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