The Legacy of Paterno and Gavitt

[Carl Spackler]

Hartfordhank - i clearly wasn't clear enough when I first wrote that about UMass and PSU in the 70's and used the word powerful in the northeast, ti wasn't about wins and losses....through all of this,it's been about recruiting, and there was major competition for Penn State with UMass for recruiting in the 70s. in that I was talking about recruiting. Perhaps it's a good clue as to why I don't get paid for writing......

 

[Uptop]

In the 70's UMass was 64-40-2 for a winning percentage of .613. They won six Yankee Conference titles. Two of those titles came with teams that went 4-4-1 and 5-6. During that period they went 8-2 against BC. One of the losses was in 1992 when UMass we 9-2 including a bowl game win in the Atlantic City Bowl. (That team included a kid named Berra who I believe posts here from time to time from the RU board) The other win over BC was 1978 when BC went 0-11.

Yogi's son, Tim Berra played WR in early to mid 70's. He was part of a receiving corp that also included Steve Schubert. Both were top notch and were drafted. And their QB was Neil Pennington who I believe got a cup of coffee in the NFL. Another one of their teammates was Bubba Pena a big time recruit out of eastern Mass who did in fact select UMass over PSU, Ohio State and Michigan. There was also an OG in the early 70's that was big time and later became an assistant on McPherson's staff.

Prior 1970's, I can only remember Lions QB, Greg Landry and Browns TE, Milt Morin as NFLer's

 

[Uptop]

ok

AJC88 and Carl,

Nice counter-punching!

++1

LOL

 

[AJC88]

I think I laid out the theory as clearly as I'm capable of.

I guess you didn't lay it out very well, I'd go back a few chapters to find it but have other threads I want to read today.

 

[SAMCRO]

Hartfordhank - i clearly wasn't clear enough when I first wrote that about UMass and PSU in the 70's and used the word powerful in the northeast, ti wasn't about wins and losses....through all of this,it's been about recruiting, and there was major competition for Penn State with UMass for recruiting in the 70s. in that I was talking about recruiting. Perhaps it's a good clue as to why I don't get paid for writing......

I just assumed you got paid by the word..... I kid, Carl, I kid.

 

[gars44]

Pretty interesting stuff. Thanks all!!

 

[beerfan]

Wow, this is why I love the Boneyard, I'm on a 3 hour train ride back from Newark and this thread is the most entertaining thing on the entire internet right now.

 

[gars44]

Look, I proabbaly shouldn't have said the things about northesat football that I did, becuase proabably most of the readers and writers here were not even born by the time 1-A, 1-AA split.

Hell, PP graduated from Penn State, the year that college football first went to divisions 1, 2, and 3. based on numbers of football scholarships that could be awarded, and he's old.

This entire thing I've written is about recruiting. REcruiting battles. Joe Paterno was able to build a fantastic football program at Penn St and he maintained the longevity of it, by being instrumental in changes after the 1960s, through the 1970s, by completely removing the vast majority of recruiting competition in a series of moves, the brilliance of which, is unparalled. The way he did it, changed the landscape of intercollegiate athletics and youth athletics all over the most highly populated area of this country. FOr the better.

I am saying that the vast variety of youth athletic opportunities that exist for kids in the northeast, is directly related to the changes that occurred in college football in the 1970s.

You don't see kids with the programs and opportunities they've got here in the football countries down south, and out west. Thats a great thing to me. Athletics and kids go hand in hand, and every child growing up through sport and school, and finding sports they can excel at, is a great thing, that doesn't exist everywhere in this country.

Many football people would say that the diversity in youth programs in the northeast is detriment to college football programs, I don't think so. N0t at all.

Just tryin to learn some the youngsters some history. Some history that completely has been ignored in eveyrthign I've read about Joe Paterno since his passing.

Good day all, I've got some real work to do, this doesn't pay the bills. But it is fun for me.

Don't tell me you're not retired. You have to be retired, right?

 

[whaler11]

Even if everything Carl says is true - the balance of power in college football was always going to move to the Sun Belt and Texas because of the culture and the demographics.

The Northeast is not a place where the entire town's lives and dies on the local high school football team. I was still officiating high school games the last time I went to Atlanta for a UConn/GT game and caught their local high school highlight round up show on Friday night. Those teams would absolutely dismantle high school teams in Connecticut.

You don't see kids from the Northeast going to the south and west to play football? You mean except for the ones that they actually recruit?

 

[gars44]

Wow, this is why I love the Boneyard, I'm on a 3 hour train ride back from Newark and this thread is the most entertaining thing on the entire internet right now.

Have to wonder how many people on the internet right now would agree with you. I agree with you, but how many others on the internet do too? Hmmmm.....

 

[Carl Spackler]

Even if everything Carl says is true - the balance of power in college football was always going to move to the Sun Belt and Texas because of the culture and the demographics.

The Northeast is not a place where the entire town's lives and dies on the local high school football team. I was still officiating high school games the last time I went to Atlanta for a UConn/GT game and caught their local high school highlight round up show on Friday night. Those teams would absolutely dismantle high school teams in Connecticut.

You don't see kids from the Northeast going to the south and west to play football? You mean except for the ones that they actually recruit?

Well, I've read through this thing, and maybe I wasn't clear enough again, but if you do pay attention, you can go back in find where I talk about exactly how the northeast WAS exactly like that - full of towns that lived and died on the local high school football teams. It was like that from the beginning of american football right up through the 1950s and 1960s.

With the changes in intercollegiate scholarships in the 70s around football, specifically the number that could be awarded, conicides exactly the the explosion in diversity in boys youth sports in the north east.

The northeast corridor of the USA is the most expensive and highly populated region of the country, and it has been since the white man began to move the natives out. Education is very costly. Scholarships - well there was a time when scholarships were completely frowned upon for athletes in colleges, but that changed, and scholarships were earned most easily by football players coming out of high school. The concept of scholarships for anythign but football is a relatively new thing in the history of college athletics, and guess what - the trend in the rising numbers of scholarships awarded to intercollegiate student athletes in the wide variety of sports that exists today started - in the 70s - at the same time that the numbers of football scholarships that could be awarded was being used to divide up the intercollegiate athletic world into specific divisions.

With the decreasing numbers of scholarships available to all the colleges that are located in the northeast for football, came the increasing numbers of scholarships for other sports for boys to earn coming up through grade school, and the diversity of youth programs in the north east explodes.

THere's a whole other dimension too - women's sports. I'd bet there's some women out there, with an interest in how that all fits in too.

Guess what year title IX was incorporated? Go ahead.......1972.

What I am NOT saying is that Joe Paterno was instrumental and causative to all of this. Definitely not the early stuff, but he was smart enough to recognize how the divisions in 1972 changed his recruiting profile, and then had a big part in the further dividing division 1 into 1-A and 1-AA, which made recruiting for Penn State at 1-A a hell of a lot easier.

 

[Carl Spackler]

There are many towns in the northeast, that still live and die by high school football, and there are several right here in CT. THere were a lot more up until the 1970s.

 

[whaler11]

Well, I've read through this thing, and maybe I wasn't clear enough again, but if you do pay attention, you can go back in find where I talk about exactly how the northeast WAS exactly like that - full of towns that lived and died on the local high school football teams. It was like that from the beginning of american football right up through the 1950s and 1960s.

I'm not really debating with you. At one point New Britain lived and died with CCSU's DII basketball program. The Northeast was going to give priority to education over sports relative to other parts of the country, with or without Joe Paterno.

I'm happy to live in a part of the country where kids don't peak in high school. It's fine with me that our public schools exist to prepare kids for college rather than to beat the team 2 exits down the Interstate on Friday night.

 

[whaler11]

There are many towns in the northeast, that still live and die by high school football, and there are several right here in CT. THere were a lot more up until the 1970s.

What town in Connecticut lives and dies with high school football. I was out there every weekend for 8 seasons. I officiated with the Hartford board and before that I did the PA for the Waterbury high schools and used to travel with Crosby.

Before that I lived in Fairfield County and nobody there gave a damn.

 

[FDNY99]

Whaler11 I would say the towns in the Naugatuck Valley...ESPECIALLY Ansonia.

 

[whaler11]

Whaler11 I would say the towns in the Naugatuck Valley...ESPECIALLY Ansonia.

Eh. I've been there plenty and it's nothing like other parts of the country. Even if there were 3-4 towns in the NVL that were... it doesn't really change the reality of the entire state and region.