The Lion in Autumn Read Online Free

deconstructing Penn State football. He was going to demand more, inspire more, discipline more. He was going to discard some philosophies that no longer worked and adopt a few new ones.
    â€œYou forget to do the things that got you there,” he would explain. “You stop paying attention to the tiny details. Now I’ve got to get back to those things. It’s like starting over. I’ve got to prove a couple of things and I think it’s going to be interesting to see if I can do it.”
    His team had gotten its first glimpse of the changes a month earlier.
    The 2003 Nittany Lions had been as bad off the field as on it. Inside the program, there was a hope that with the end of that dreadful season might come an end to the extracurricular trouble as well. Paterno certainly intended that to be the case.
    Then, sometime around 4:00 A . M . on February 7, near the end of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity’s “Black Ice” dance and skate party at Penn State’s Greenburg Ice Pavilion, a fight broke out. Like a sprawling barroom brawl from an old Western, it went on for more than ten minutes and eventually involved fifteen to twenty people. Among them were three key players, defensive linemen Matthew Rice and Ed Johnson and quarterback/wide receiver Michael Robinson.
    Robinson, the central ingredient in Paterno’s football plans for the upcoming season, had been knocked into the rink’s glass trophy case during the fight. The junior was cut so badly behind his left ear that he needed twenty-four stitches to close the wound. No charges were ever filed, but Paterno suspended Johnson and Rice for summer practice. Robinson, whose role in the melee the coach deemed “not as aggressive,” was put on probation.
    â€œThey were wrong. They were in a fight,” Paterno told reporters. “We’ve taken care of it.”
    That sentiment was for public consumption. Privately, Paterno fumed. He quickly summoned his team to a meeting. He told them he wouldn’t put up with that kind of thing this season. They were going to discover a lot of changes when they returned to the field the following month. Either they’d work harder and behave better or theywouldn’t be running out of the Beaver Stadium tunnel with him next September 4 for the season-opening game with Akron.
    â€œHe told us, ‘That’s it,’ ” said senior quarterback Zack Mills. “ ‘Next incident, you’re gone.’ He was tired of it happening every other week. He’s serious. . . . The margin for error is gone.”
    All rules would be strictly enforced. No long hair, cornrows, beards, or mustaches. Players struggling in class or late for meetings would jeopardize their playing time.
    The athletes, many of whom had been so dismayed by the 3–9 season that they were considering transfers, welcomed the new spark they saw in their old coach.
    â€œWe needed Joe to put us in our place,” said tight end Isaac Smolko.
    So even though, at this first spring workout, the players’ outfits were relatively casual—navy-blue shorts, white T-shirts, spikes, and helmets—the atmosphere was surprisingly intense for March.
    â€œHe wants to coach like he coached in the past, when people were scared of him,” said Levi Brown, an offensive tackle. “I don’t think people have been scared of him lately.”
    Players had been accustomed to Paterno’s whiny complaints and his obsession with details. Many of them, though, had begun to tune him out. While they respected his accomplishments, and were in awe of his reputation, they couldn’t help but occasionally see him as a grandfatherly figure, a hopelessly outdated old man who sputtered furiously—comically sometimes to them—at their mistakes and constantly referenced long-gone players and coaches.
    Now, with his postbrawl crackdown and his vow of zero tolerance, their views began to