While understanding that the mere invocation of Joe Paterno’s name elicits strong feelings on both sides of the equation, please remember that there were more than a few times when it was clear the late Penn State football coach knew what he was talking about.
Exhibit A: Take care of the little things, and the big things take care of themselves.
Inarguable. If you do the detail work, you can accomplish great things.
Exhibit B: What you give to one, you take away from the other.
He often used this when asked about the positive attributes of one of his players, fearful of putting any one guy above the team.
Exhibit C came to mind after Indiana beat the Nittany Lions 27-24 on Saturday, on a miraculous toe-tapping, back-of-the-end-zone touchdown reception by Omar Cooper Jr. with 36 seconds left. (Here’s the wider angle, for good measure.)
The second-ranked Hoosiers – it still seems weird to type that – had beaten all but one of their first nine opponents this season by 10 points or more, and were 14.5-point favorites over the Nits. But the way things unfolded brought to mind something Paterno said during the 1994 season, when PSU, boasting one of the great offenses in college football history, clubbed everyone (save for an escape at Michigan).
Somewhere in there, Paterno cautioned that the Lions’ day of reckoning would surely come – that they would unquestionably find themselves backed into a corner, where it would be incumbent upon them to take care of the little things, etc.
“It’s not like it’s not gonna happen,” he said.
And sure enough, that day arrived in the ninth week of the season, when PSU found itself in a 21-0 hole at Illinois. The Lions made it close, and then fashioned a 96-yard drive deep into the fourth quarter, finally winning it, 35-31, on a one-yard TD dive by fullback Brian Milne with 57 seconds left. (They went on to finish 12-0, but somehow were ranked second in the final polls, to Nebraska. Which brings to mind something else Paterno has been proven right about – the need for a playoff.)
On Saturday the shoe was on the other foot. PSU, 3-5 and losers of five straight coming in, rallied from 13 down to go up 24-20 with 6:27 remaining. After an exchange of punts, the Hoosiers took over at their own 20 with 1:51 left. They marched 80 yards in 10 plays, five of them completions by quarterback Fernando Mendoza, a Heisman hopeful.
Cooper’s grab might very well have been the best ever made in Beaver Stadium. The only one that compares in my mind was a one-handed parallel-to-the-ground catch by PSU’s Bobby Engram during a 63-14 drubbing of Ohio State in ‘94 (as shown at 3:52 of this video).
But given the stakes, this one was better. (And understand that Cooper is no stranger to the spectacular. Two years ago at Michigan, he also made a leaping snag while being undercut by a defender – and held on as he landed on his head.)
One other note that might be interesting only to me: Cooper’s catch came at the back of the South End Zone, not far from the spot where it appeared Alabama’s Preston Gothard had made a game-winning catch in the final seconds against PSU in 1983, capping a Crimson Tide rally from a 34-7 deficit. Alas, it was ruled in that pre-replay era that Gothard was out of bounds. (Judge for yourself from this video.)
Everything is still in play for the Hoosiers, who are 10-0 and appear to be on a collision course with top-ranked Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game.
(Again, hard to fathom. Until Saturday, IU and Northwestern were the losingest programs in FBS history, with 715 defeats apiece. But the night before the Hoosiers grabbed a rabbit out of a hat in Happy Valley, the Wildcats lost to USC, surpassing Indiana.)
IU closes out the regular season with a home game against Wisconsin and a visit to Purdue. The conference title is a possibility. The CFP is likely. It’s just a matter of continuing to take care of the little things. Because the big things surely are taking care of themselves.