The Lion in Autumn Read Online Free Page A

change. Almost immediately, defensive linemen Johnson, Lavon Chisley, and Tamba Hali got rid of their cornrows.
    â€œ[After] a three-and-nine season, a lot of people might say, ‘It’s over. We should leave. Some people should get out of here,’ ” explained Hali. “But if you have guys still here, trying to work . . . showing our dedication, that’s more togetherness right there. . . . If anything is going to help us get back on track, we want to do that.”
    Paterno’s message came through so loud and so clear that it even filtered down to some of the Pennsylvania high school players Penn State was recruiting.
    â€œPaterno is cracking down on everything now, he wants his program run his way,” Dan Lawlor, a fullback from Mechanicsburg who signed with the Nittany Lions, told a reporter. “He’s doing everything he can to help it recover.”
    A. Q. Shipley, a defensive tackle from Coraopolis who also wound up at Penn State, said that in his talks with Paterno, the coach had “come across real strict. You can just tell it’s his way or no way.”
    Paterno needed more than discipline. He needed a new Penn State paradigm.
    While college football was getting faster and flashier all the time, Paterno’s teams often appeared as out of fashion as their famously stark navy-and-white uniforms. Right or wrong, the perception was that the Nittany Lions were mired in the past. Was it any wonder so many hip-hop-generation recruits, even in Pennsylvania, were looking elsewhere?
    â€œThe teams that play us know what we’re going to run,” star running back Larry Johnson had said after a 2000 loss to lightly regarded Toledo, a bitter postgame analysis that inflamed the “Joe Must Go” movement. “They can pull out the tapes from ‘92 or ‘93, and we run the same offense. Same plays, same offense. . . . Sometimes, I don’t even know the play and I can guess what’s coming. The system is too predictable. It’s been around too long.”
    If Paterno couldn’t produce evidence of positive change in 2004—on and off the field—the tumult surrounding his age and abilities would ratchet up considerably. That was why a near-palpable sense of urgency surrounded him.
    He had always been fanatical in his devotion to his job. “He goes and goes and goes until it’s time to go to bed,” his brother George once said. As he aged, that passion grew uncontrollably, like kudzu, until it choked out almost everything else.
    â€œThere isn’t anything in my life anymore except for my family andfootball,” Paterno said. His wife of forty-two years offered a similar assessment, though adding “walking” to his short list of passions.
    A year ago, however, he had hinted that he was nearing a point when he might begin to relinquish some duties to assistants. While he remained remarkably involved in every detail of football and recruiting, Paterno, mentally at least, had seemed ready to relax his grip.
    But sometime during those long winter walks around town or on Sunset Park’s bicycle and jogging paths, Paterno convinced himself that what was required was more, not less, dedication. At his age, with his detractors howling, he didn’t have time for long-range solutions. So changes, drastic changes, had to be tried. And they had to be tried fast.
    Extracurricular demands had long been a burden and a drain on the time he could devote to the players and coaching. Now he began to think of ways to ease that load, perhaps by creating a new position in the athletic department for someone who could handle the requests, the phone calls, and the paperwork.
    â€œOne of the problems that you get the longer you’re in it: The more friends and kids, and people who count on you,” Paterno had said earlier, “and your time away from coaching gets more and more significant. People have