One For The Money

Drenched to his eyeballs by last Saturday's daylong tropical rain and facing desperate circumstances, Penn State coach Joe Paterno wasted neither time nor syllables in selecting a quarterback to save his team's season. He turned to his left, where senior Kevin Thompson and junior Rashard Casey stood side by side in the mist. "I'm going to go with Thompson," Paterno said, and with those six words, Casey stepped back and Thompson stepped forward. Paterno put a hand on Thompson's shoulder and sent him into the game.

Seventy-nine yards of scarred Orange Bowl turf separated the Nittany Lions from the field goal that would tie Miami or the touchdown that would beat the Hurricanes, who had taken a 23-20 lead with 7:42 to go. Now only 1:52 remained. A loss would severely wound either team's national championship hopes. Thompson took his place at the point of Penn State's huddle, his back to the closed end of the stadium, where a solid wall of Miami fans was already in full-on celebration of the Hurricanes' imminent return to glory. Thompson broke Penn State's huddle and walked to the line of scrimmage. Briefly he looked right, then left, before smacking his hands against center Francis Spano's butt, demanding the ball.

Two-quarterback systems have cropped up all across college football through the early weeks of this season (box, page 51). At least 15 teams have failed to settle on a fulltime signal-caller, violating one of the game's credos. They've ended up this way because neither quarterback is good enough to start (as at Syracuse) or because both are (Arizona). They're prolonging a preseason competition that was never resolved (Ohio State) or keeping a future starter happy (Michigan). Yet no team has done it more controversially, more confoundingly or with more at stake than Penn State.

The quarterback issue has simmered in Happy Valley since one-year starter Mike McQueary's eligibility ended after the 1997 season. Thompson and Casey shared the position early last year, but from midseason on the job belonged to Thompson, who struggled as a first-time starter on a team that finished 9-3 and scored a total of 12 points in Big Ten losses to Ohio State, Michigan and Wisconsin. He was booed at home. He was booed after being introduced at a Penn State basketball game. He was booed during the spring game in April. "He's been given some pretty rough treatment, especially considering he's just a college athlete," says his father, Vince. Four days before the game against Miami, Kevin sat in a quiet corner of the Penn State locker room and assessed his reputation: "People hate me."

Nittany Lions fans, meanwhile, grew hungry for more of Casey. He completed only 18 passes a year ago, yet he was what every skilled backup quarterback represents: greener grass. He had to be better than Thompson, the Penn State faithful reasoned.

The glaring differences between Thompson and Casey—athletic and otherwise-only made the controversy richer. Thompson is a 6'5", 230-pound quarterback straight from central casting, raised in the Washington, D.C., suburbs by a cop (Vince, retired from the Montgomery County, Md., force) and a police secretary (Alana). The 6'1", 197-pound Casey was raised by a single mother (Barbara) in the projects of Hoboken, N.J., and now is raising a 2½-year-old son, Rashard Jr., with the child's mother, Melodie Alvarado, who is Casey's longtime girlfriend and also a student at Penn State. Little Rashard wears a miniature number 12 Nittany Lions' jersey to home games. "The two guys, Kevin and Rashard, are like night and day," says Penn State senior fullback Aaron Harris.

Thompson kicks it with offensive linemen and works the locker room, dispensing props and digs in equal quantity (though to the public he's polite to the point of stiffness). Casey hangs with the so-called Virginia Boys—safety James Boyd, wideout Bruce Branch and linebacker Eric Sturdifen, all citizens of the Commonwealth—and floats among his other teammates like a ghost. Early in Casey's career the Penn State coaches had to tell him to slow down his speech in the huddle, because his rapid-fire Jersey banter was incomprehensible to some of the Lions. To complete the picture, Thompson is white, Casey is black. Both are popular, yet, says junior linebacker LaVar Arrington, "Half the guys in the locker room would like to see Kevin play all the time and half would like to see Rashard play all the time. We'll play hard for either one of them, and the important thing is to win, but guys have their favorite."

The quarterback issue appeared to have died in April when Thompson won the starting job during spring practice and was voted offensive captain. Yet Paterno gave Casey quality snaps in season-opening wins over Arizona and Akron, and it was Casey who directed a slick first-quarter drive that jump-started Penn State's offense in a 20-17 win over Pitt on Sept. 11 (before Thompson guided the Lions to the game-winning field goal). Their skills are as divergent as their personalities. Thompson is slower afoot but reliable. Casey is elusive but unpredictable. "Casey is the one who scares us to death," said Miami coach Butch Davis before the Hurricanes played Penn State. "He might throw a couple of passes to us, but he might make some real big plays, too. I'd just as soon not see him play at all."

Both have been asked to run an offense that was too simple to be effective a year ago—when Paterno relied on his defense to win games—and is now fairly sophisticated. Further complicating matters, Paterno will often usurp play-calling from offensive coordinator Fran Ganter in the middle of the game. It's a delicate situation. Florida State coach Bobby Bowden kept his hand in the play-calling mix in a similar way until 1996, when coordinator Mark Richt told Bowden that he was messing up his sequences. "That's what Fran tells me," Paterno says. "He doesn't like it. But I don't want to reach the point where I can't be involved." Ganter says, "We're all aiming for the same thing. Besides, it's Joe's football team."

After Paterno played Casey for just 17 snaps (to Thompson's 58) in the ugly victory over Pittsburgh, some outsiders inferred that he was phasing out Casey. After all, in his 33 previous years of coaching the Nittany Lions he'd never used two quarterbacks. "We had Todd Blackledge and Jeff Hostetler here at the same time [in 1980]," says Ganter. "They were clones, and they were both good, but Joe picked one guy then." Yet Paterno was angry at himself for limiting Casey's work against Pitt. "I should have played him more," he said two days before the Miami game. "These two kids are very equal in ability. Thompson has more experience, but I've got to find more time for Casey. I'll play him more against Miami."