Amid sanctions, Penn State's seniors salvaged season

Coach Bill O‘Brien often can‘t say enough about the role Penn State‘s seniors played in leading the Nittany Lions to an improbable 8-4 record this past season.

But two key words offer the simplest explanation of why this senior class will go down as perhaps the most important in Penn State football history: “Charlie Mike.”

That is military shorthand for the initials C.M., which stand for “Continue Mission.” Following an inspirational speech from a former Nittany Lion and Navy SEAL, those words became the rallying cry for the players in August. And the code words help tell the story of a group that refused to let Penn State fail after crippling NCAA sanctions in July triggered widespread predictions of collapse.

Notre Dame and Alabama play for the national championship Monday night, bringing an end to the college football season that capped the most trying year in Penn State history. If the Nittany Lions one day rejoin the elite in college football, 2012 will go down as a seminal season.

Senior leaders, many of whom composed an unheralded recruiting class five years earlier, helped prevent a mass exodus of underclassmen in the days after the sanctions were announced. The Tribune-Review talked exclusively with a handful of those players, including outside linebacker Michael Mauti, about how they held the team together during the most precarious time in program history.

The efforts of Mauti and his fellow seniors started the same day the NCAA slapped the program with sanctions that included a four-year postseason ban and allowed all players to transfer without penalty. That night, Mauti and running back Mike Zordich showed up unannounced at the on-campus apartment of defensive tackle Jordan Hill.

“We need to keep this (expletive) together,” they told Hill after he opened the door.

The players met with O‘Brien, who was six months removed from a trip to the Super Bowl as New England‘s offense coordinator, shortly after the NCAA sanctions were announced.

“He didn‘t show weakness of hoping guys would stay or begging guys to stay,” said senior offensive tackle Mike Farrell, a Shady Side Academy graduate. “He was honest, but he was firm with the plan that he had, and I don‘t think he could have done it better any other way.”

The seniors pledged to stay together almost immediately after the sanctions were unveiled, and they took the lead in persuading underclassmen not to flee the program.

Hill talked to every defensive lineman and told them to call him at any time with questions or doubts.

Senior cornerback Stephon Morris, to whom the concept of loyalty is fiercely personal, talked to the defensive backs about how he planned to honor the commitment he had made to Penn State. Sophomore cornerback Adrian Amos and freshman cornerback Da‘Quan Davis thanked Morris afterward. Both told Morris that they hoped to lead like him one day.

Mauti and Zordich kept detailed notes on every player and where each stood as far as staying at Penn State or leaving. The two players would work out first thing in the morning and try to stay in front of the fluid transfer situation in the afternoon.

Nights were spent in O‘Brien‘s office, as Mauti and Zordich shared notes on what they were hearing with the head coach and strength coach Craig Fitzgerald. Mauti and Zordich outlined scenarios in which a player might leave and what player or players he might follow out of Penn State.

“Going to bed at 3 or 4 at night and wake up at 6 in the morning and doing it all over again,” Zordich said of the days after the sanctions were announced. “We had it all mapped out.”

Mauti found out one day that two of his teammates were visiting Michigan State, and he reached one of them by cell phone. After he delivered a pitch as to why they should stay at Penn State, the two turned around and headed back.

Mauti declined to name the players, but he said the anecdote illustrates how fine a line there was between keeping the program together and watching it crumble.

The first significant loss came a week after the sanctions were handed down when star tailback Silas Redd made official his plans to transfer to Southern Cal.

O‘Brien had previously invited hundreds of former lettermen back to Penn State, and they were scheduled to address the team that night. O‘Brien told them following the loss of Redd that he needed their help.

No former player did more to galvanize the current ones than a walk-on whose name might not register with even the most avid Penn State fan.

Rick Slater joined the team in the late 1990s, at age 28, after serving eight years in the military. After 9/11, he re-enlisted, and by the time O‘Brien had asked him to address the 2012 team, the Navy SEAL had served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Players sat at attention as Slater brought to life abstract values such as duty and honor. He talked to them about how his life depended on trust and knowing the guy next to him would fight for him.

Then Slater took off the football belt he had worn at Penn State. He told the players that it had been on every continent and that he had worn it during every mission.

Slater concluded by exhorting the players to “Charlie Mike” — continue mission.

The words made their way onto T-shirts as well as the wall of Penn State‘s weight room.

Players would often bark the words in unison after they broke a team huddle. And “Charlie Mike” is the reason Penn State didn‘t unravel after opening the season with back-to-back losses for the first time since 2001.

“We didn‘t have any come-to-Jesus meetings in that aspect among seniors or among players,” Farrell said of the start that included a demoralizing one-point loss at Virginia. “We just maintained that idea that we were just going to refuse to be denied.”

Penn State won seven of its next nine games, and the team that was not allowed to play in a bowl game turned into one of the stories of the year in college football.

Players, however, chafed at the notion that Penn State would play with house money in the regular-season finale since it already had guaranteed itself a winning record.

Mauti, after all, had taped Slater‘s speech from more than two months earlier inside his locker for a reason.

The night before the final game against Wisconsin, O‘Brien asked every senior to address the team.

Morris talked about his father, Roman, who had raised him after his mother tried to give him away at age 2 and how much Penn State meant to both of them. Hill told the team about his father, who had suffered a stroke a couple of years earlier and taught his son the real meaning of perseverance.

Mauti talked about everything he had been through at Penn State, which included three season-ending knee injuries, the firing and death of former head coach Joe Paterno and the fallout from the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

The next day, Penn State placed the 2012 team in the school‘s ring of honor. The Nittany Lions wore No. 42 on their helmets to honor Mauti, who could not play against Wisconsin after injuring his knee the previous game. Outside linebacker Gerald Hodges switched from No. 6 to No. 42 as a tribute to his teammate and close friend.

Hill, who had suffered two knee injuries earlier in the season, dominated the game on one healthy leg. Maligned kicker Sam Ficken booted a 37-yard field goal in overtime. The Badgers couldn‘t match the field goal after Hill wrecked yet another Wisconsin possession.

A glowing scoreboard on a bitterly cold night at Beaver Stadium said it all: Penn State 24, Wisconsin 21.

In the glow of a victorious locker room, Zordich spread the two words. They were the password to get players and their families into a private party later at a popular State College restaurant.

More than six weeks later, “Charlie Mike” offers the most succinct summation of a season that won‘t soon be forgotten.

“We understood that it was just bigger than us and having gone through so much in our careers and more adversity than any other team and program in history, we came out with our guns blazing and with our hair on fire,” Mauti said. “That‘s the only way I want to be remembered. We lit our hair on fire back in July, and we just played as hard as we could on every play until our last play.”

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The young men on the PSU football team should be commended for their surprising success this year despite all the adversity they faced.

No one should hold the Jerry Sandusky situation against these young men - they had no responsibility for his actions nor any cover up - they were also victims of the situation. (Of course, not nearly as victimized as the young men that JS molested.)

Paterno did not fire js. js voluntarily retired at the end of the 1998 season after Joe telling him he spent too much time with the second mile, and that he would never succeed him because he wasn’t dedicated enough.

js took advantage of a then bargain state retirement plan and that put in place all the emeritus status crap (that Joe had nothing to do with).

In 1999, PSU didn’t have a defensive coordinator and hired js back on a consultant basis to basically be the defacto DC. The following year Tom Bradley took over.

js was never fired. He retired, was re-hired for a year, and then gone.

This is spelled out crystal clear in Posnanski’s book. Posnanski (who basically lived with the Paternos for over a year) also makes it clear that Joe didn’t know about 1998.

The factfreeh report actually gets one thing right in stating that there was no connection to js’s retirement and the 1998 accusation.

Paterno did not allow js to retire, that was above Paterno’s pay grade. With no criminal charges there was probably nothing else the administration could do.

js having campus access was due to his tenure, another decision above Paterno’s pay grade.

You can bet that they did not meet at the local coffee shop on Saturday mornings.

I can only guess, but I would surmise that when the 2001 allegations came out that Paterno probably got on the phone with the people responsible for js still being around and gave them a peice of his mind. At the time of the 2001 allegations Paterno followed state law and reported the incident to his superior.

I’m just curious, what should Paterno have done that would not have violated state law and opened himself up to possible prosecution?

Paterno was not the ‘God’ that his naysayers refer to him as. He was God of the football program, but outside of the program he was just another tenured professor.

You’re asking me to prove a negative? How about you prove to me that Joe DID know about 1998.

If he WAS told about 1998 (it would have been by Schultz), then Schultz would have been violating PA law. Which makes perfect sense.

Franco has spoken on this very issue numerous times. Maybe you should check out some of the work John Ziegler and Franco have been doing instead of listening to mike and mike.

Franco is also on record (on video) saying MM told him he told Joe practically nothing that morning. Is Franco a liar now?

So how do you see fit to blame and penalize the players past and present for something the Penn State administration was accused of doing?

Show me where i did that. This is about people who refer to the "adversity" that Penn State and its highest administrators have been through (bad press, NCAA sanctions, firing), without mentioning the children who were abused. It seems misplaced feelings of victimization, no?

They don't acknowledge that their PSU administrators covered up for a child molester. They actually think these administrators, not children, are the ones abused. They sound kind of like you, with that "accused of doing" bit. I guess you also believe PSU admin, including JoePa, did nothing wrong, huh?

Doesn't bode well for self examination to ensure this never happens again.

You’re asking me to prove a negative?

How did I do that? By saying your idea of "evidence" in making your case is pretty flimsy? A book by a guy who lived with paterno for a year is solid evidence, but an investigative report by an FBI Director is not.

And apparently, according to your earlier post, you were there when JoePa told Sandusky why he should retire. I didn't see any other evidence cited for that.

Again, to my question: Do you believe Jerry Sandusky molested children on the campus of PSU? You should be able to answer that with yes or no.

You keep using the words “cover up” as if they are facts. They aren’t.

The looming trials of Schultz, Curley, and Spanier will determine that. If they ever happen.

You obviously still need some life lessons. So we’ll start with because someone says something - say louis freeh or mike greenberg - it doesn’t make it true.

There is no “cover up”. There was no “cover up”. It makes no sense. If there was a “cover up”, why all the testimony? You run your mouth, but you don’t think.

It was just a bunch of bumbling administrators trying to deal with someone that (at the time) they thought had “boundary issues.”

Looking back, it’s easy to pile on knowing what we know now. At the time, they didn’t know anything. One incident (1998), which was obviously deferred by every local agency.

Yes I do. I don’t believed he “raped” anyone anywhere near the PSU campus though. I just don’t find it plausible. The original AG’s presentment used their embellishment to bring forward more victims (which is a good thing), but at the expense of the truth (which is a bad thing).

That set the narrative. When you conduct a national poll like Ziegler did and find that 27% of the nation thinks Joe Paterno molested children, then you have a problem on the message side of the issue as well.

Good points that you and others made here. However, let us face the fact that the apologists for Paterno will never see that facts are facts, and hero worship is hero worship.

The whole thing stinks, from A to Z. There is no doubt that Paterno stayed too long and was shielded from a program he no longer had the capacity to manage, that the football program was insulated, that Sandusky was a child sex offender. There is no doubt that long before any firings, media investigation or reports MANY people in Happy Valley knew about Sandusky. As with all disasters, there were many warnings and as with all disasters, many things had to go wrong before the situation finally came to light.

If anything can be learned from this mess, it should be that if you are going to be a coach, know when to leave, make sure you understand you duties and responsibilities. Paterno was too old, out of touch. Those that continue to defend Penn State have to come to grips with the facts

Those that continue to defend Penn State have to come to grips with the facts
Not only that, they fail to acknowledge that Penn State was given a tremendous pass when it came to sanctions....SMU was given the death sentence i.e.
The 1987 season was canceled; only conditioning drills (without pads) were permitted until the spring of 1988. All home games in 1988 were canceled. SMU was allowed to play their seven regularly scheduled away games so that other institutions would not be financially affected. The university ultimately chose to cancel the away games as well. The team's existing probation was extended to 1990. Its existing ban from bowl games and live television was extended to 1989. SMU lost 55 new scholarship positions over 4 years. The team was allowed to hire only five full-time assistant coaches instead of the typical nine. No off-campus recruiting was permitted until August 1988, and no paid visits could be made to campus by potential recruits until the start of the 1988–89 school year

This for a recruiting violation!!!

This for a recruiting violation!!!

...sorry to keep bumping old threads, but this thread I find interesting...I do believe SMU’s sins were a bit more involved than some recruiting violations...included were illicit payments and other such perks...and when it became common knowledge, they showed a studied indifference to it and made no attempt to correct...of course today, with so many calling for players to be paid, maybe SMU was just ahead of the curve...

...this is one of the most cogent posts on this subject I’ve read on this forum...if Paterno had left at 75, a reasonable age to have done so, he would have escaped any opprobrium from this, as he would have had no reason to know (other than by rumor, as he testified to the grand jury, thus letting the cat out of the bag about JS’s well known debauchery)any specifics...
...I have limited sympathy for Paterno, limited because he made his own bed by losing touch with his own creation, and because he tried to set the terms of his own leaving when he had no capital left to dictate anything...but, I firmly believe, a younger more intense Paterno would have grabbed this monster by the shirt and tossed him all the way to Bellefonte...but by 2001, that Paterno was a memory, and things played out the way they did...

...one thing I think we’ll someday find out is why Paterno told JS he would never be the head coach...the cover story that he spent too much time with Second Mile is ridiculous, as he could have said that to him ten years earlier and it would have been equally true then...knowing that would be good information to have...

With all PSU has been through, we’re still blessed.

With all PSU has been through?? That’s an odd way of looking at it.

...odd, indeed...welcome to the state of denial, in which the residents believe that their football program missing a few bowl games and losing out on some recruits rises to the level of catastrophic victimhood...these guys are a riot...on one hand, they blast PSU for unfairly trashing Paterno’s legacy, then on the other, they still go to the games, subsidizing the very thing they claim to hate, and then swoon over gushing articles like the above...thusly proving that football in fact trumps considerations of ethical behavior, or the lack thereof...

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