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 Inside College Football
Posted: Tuesday August 31, 1999 03:08 PM Wolfpack Block Party | Fast Forward Penn State unveils a wide-open offense to go with its formidable D By Ivan Maisel
After Penn State's crushing 41-7 defeat of Arizona in the Pigskin Classic last Saturday, there's only one question left to ask about the Nittany Lions: Can their much-heralded defense keep up with their offense? Led with equal aplomb by its quarterbacks, steady senior Kevin Thompson and exciting junior Rashard Casey, the offense gained 504 yards against the Wildcats, who entered the game ranked No. 4 in the nation. It looked as if the Nittany Lions had taken megadoses of Florida's fun 'n' gun vitamins; Thompson and Casey even alternated plays in one second-quarter series, the way Gators quarterbacks did two seasons ago in a 21-6 victory over Penn State in the Citrus Bowl. "We weren't going to play very close to the vest," Nittany Lions offensive coordinator Fran Ganter said after the game. "We didn't think [Arizona] was a team we could overpower. We tricked them a little bit."
Arizona's defensive game plan accounted for the loss of its best defensive back, senior strong safety Greg Payne, who sprained his left ankle two weeks before the game. The Wildcats moved inside linebacker Scooter Sprotte to strong safety, lined up junior Antonio Pierce at linebacker and got ready to smash some mouths. They never did. On the Nittany Lions' third snap, fifth-year senior flanker Chafie Fields took a reverse around left end for 20 yards. On the next play sophomore tailback Eric McCoo shifted out of the I, lined up as a third receiver on the right side and caught a swing pass for eight yards. Three plays later Fields caught a short pass over the middle and turned it into a 37-yard touchdown. That wasn't the end of the pyrotechnics. On Penn State's next possession, Fields went into motion, took a handoff from Casey and turned upfield for 70 yards and another touchdown. (Ganter says he filed away the play after watching Florida use it.) Before six minutes had elapsed, Penn State led 14-0. The game vindicated Thompson, who had been much maligned for his inconsistent play last season, but he refused to indulge himself. "We're not trying to prove things to anybody," he said afterward. "We weren't running the ball effectively enough [today] to win against Ohio State and Michigan State. We've got to be more consistent." On Saturday for Penn State, both quarterbacks, three running backs and Fields had at least one rush of 10 yards or more. Paterno said that one game couldn't tell him much about his 34th Nittany Lions team. But the only real complaint he made after the game concerned the bee that had stung his right hand in the fourth quarter. The sting he ran on Arizona was 10 times worse.
Seminoles' Kendra Returns: Dan Kendra stood by himself in a corner of the Florida State locker room, grinning jubilantly. He had just played in his first game since November 1997, and even though he had contributed little to the Seminoles' 41-7 home win over Louisiana Tech -- two rushes for six yards, one reception for a 10-yard loss, and a couple of blocks -- Kendra, a backup fullback, had never felt better. Eighteen months earlier he had been Florida State's starting quarterback, a wildly intense perfectionist who thought about almost nothing but football. But then he had torn the ACL in his right knee and gone into a tailspin from which he only recently escaped. "It used to be that everything in my life revolved around football and my body," says Kendra, a 6'2", 255-pound senior who came out of Bethlehem (Pa.) Catholic as the nation's top-rated high school quarterback in 1995. "When I didn't have football last year, I was lost. I'd mope and walk around angry. Every hour of the day I'd think about football and how I couldn't play. I was obsessed; it almost destroyed me." He had surgery on the knee in April '98 and again last April, but only three weeks before two-a-days began in August, the knee was still sore and swollen. Kendra spent several sleepless nights stewing over the possibility that he wouldn't be ready to play. But on July 28, he says, he was born again while watching a TV program called Signs from God, in which a woman spoke about the power of salvation. After that, he says, his attitude changed and his anger disappeared. Although the knee began to feel better, Kendra missed half of Florida State's preseason practices and all of its scrimmages because of unrelated nagging injuries, such as the shoulder and neck stingers he incurred because he tried to run over defenders on every play. On Saturday, Kendra entered the game to a rousing ovation with 14:06 remaining in the second quarter, and after that he rotated with junior starter William McCray.
Given what he has been through, Kendra is content to be a role
player. "I'm not in the limelight like I once was, but I'm O.K.
with that," he says. "I've spent a lot of time, energy and pain
getting to this point, and I can honestly say I'm happy where I
am."
Wolfpack Block Party: If not for his persistence, North Carolina State redshirt freshman Terrence Holt might never have been on the field to block two fourth-quarter punts that the Wolfpack returned for touchdowns in a 23-20 upset of Texas. "One of our linebackers, Corey Lyons, was winded," Holt said after the game. "I told [special teams] Coach [Joe] Pate, 'Put me in.... I'm going to get one.' I practiced blocking kicks all last year on the scout team. I dreamed about doing it in a game, and now, to get two, it's so unreal." Notre Dame (1-0) at Michigan (0-0) Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr has mounted a soapbox to rail against one of the evils of college football. Agents? Scholarship limits? Lee Corso? Nope. Carr is fuming because Notre Dame played a game last week and Michigan didn't. He has suggested that the Big Ten propose a rule change that would require every Division I-A team to begin its season on the same weekend. Carr is surely aware that since 1987 the Wolverines' record in openers is 0-5-1 against the Irish and 6-0 against other teams. His stance has drawn support from an unlikely Michigan ally. "I've spoken to Lloyd about it," Ohio State coach John Cooper said Sunday after a 23-12 loss to Miami. "I don't understand why everybody doesn't start on a certain date. Hey, Penn State opened on Saturday. [If we hadn't played this game] they would have had an extra two weeks of practice on us." Cooper is referring to the fact that a team that plays a late August game is allowed to start practicing earlier in the summer. Carr, like most coaches, has a selective memory. He made his coaching debut in the 1995 Pigskin Classic, in which Michigan defeated Virginia 18-17. As far as anyone knows, his concern for fairness didn't extend to Illinois, which opened its season a week later by losing to the Wolverines 38-14. But let's give Carr the benefit of the doubt and say that he's right to worry. The Irish will spoil another Wolverines opener.
Issue date: September 6, 1999
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