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Everybody remembers these games Joe Paterno has coached 352 games at Penn State—so many that they should have blended into a blue-and-white stew of victories and defeats by now. Not so. In the 1979 Sugar Bowl the Nittany Lions were beaten by Alabama 14-7 when Tide linebacker Barry Krauss stopped Penn State's Mike Guman on fourth-and-goal at the 'Bama one-yard line in the fourth quarter. Before the play Alabama defensive tackle Marty Lyons shouted to Penn State quarterback Chuck Fusina, "Chuck, you've got 12 inches to go—you better pass."
"I remember that game as much as any I've ever played in or coached," says Paterno. "There was so much we could have done differently. Twelve men on the field, Fitzkee not running his pattern into the end zone before the catch. An awful lot goes into a season like that, and then it comes down to a couple of plays. Sometimes it's hard to get it out of your craw." Well, almost everybody Keith Jackson, an itinerant NFL tight end now with the Green Bay Packers, played for No. 2 Oklahoma in the 1988 Orange Bowl against No. 1 Miami, a matchup of the two police-blotter programs that dominated the '80s. Miami won the game 20-14, but Jackson retains a single, vivid image. "It was the greatest game I ever saw Brian Bosworth play," says Jackson of the flamboyant Sooner linebacker. "I remember him actually having to be carried off the field. He had 25 unassisted tackles and was dehydrated." Which is very sweet, except that Bosworth didn't play a down in the game. He had been drafted by the Seattle Seahawks a year earlier. Then there is Jeff Kinney, Nebraska's star running back in the 1972 Orange Bowl, which the Cornhuskers, who had already beaten Oklahoma 35-31 in the so-called Game of the Century on Thanksgiving Day, won, drilling overmatched SEC champion Alabama 38-6 in the most lopsided 1-versus-2 bowl. "Look, everybody tried to make the Orange Bowl another Game of the Century," says Kinney, "but before we played the Sooners, you wouldn't even let anybody put dressing on your salad for you, and there were 30,000 people at the airport when we came home from Oklahoma. The Orange Bowl was fine, but to be honest, I don't remember much about it."
Next: Mouthing off is not a good idea
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Paterno squirms at the memory, not just because he wanted to
pass—"Our staff and our players thought if we can't rush 12
inches down there, we don't deserve it," Paterno says—but also
because on the second-and-goal play from the six, split end
Scott Fitzkee had caught a Fusina pass and been stopped short of
the end zone by Tide cornerback Don McNeal. What's more, even
after that fourth-and-one stop, Penn State stuffed Alabama deep
in its own territory and forced a shanked punt, only to be
flagged for having 12 men on the field. Penn State eventually
got the ball back, but in a less advantageous position.