The Lion in Autumn Read Online Free Page B

funerals, [former] players have kids who need a hand, the whole band of people you’re involved with stretches. Every year it stretches a little bit more. That’s when you start to get swamped. You keep thinking it won’t hurt here, it won’t hurt there. You wake up one morning and you have a crappy organization.”
    By the time spring practice began, there were whispers around State College about Paterno’s “Grand Experiment II.” This master plan allegedly was not at all like its famous predecessor, in which Paterno outlined his plans to marry academics and athletics. This experiment was all about restoring the luster to his program.
    â€œWe had to get the whole program back into a little different mode,” Paterno said of his off-season contemplations. “You’ve got to figure out how you’re going to get this thing done so you can protect the coaches and make sure the university has the ability to continue the kind of tradition we’ve had. You have an obligation to make sure the kids you recruited have some success. All of that was in my mindwhen I decided I was going to give it a shot. And once I made that decision, I wasn’t going to go about it halfhearted. I was going to bust my butt.”
    Continued football difficulties could be devastating to Penn State. Too much losing could adversely affect more than the school’s athletic reputation. Alumni contributions, political support, and student applications all rode on the back of football success.
    So in the run-up to spring drills, he further limited his access—and that of his assistants and players—to fans and reporters. He stopped walking to his office each morning and evening to save time. His wife told interviewers that he was “preoccupied, distracted.”
    â€œThere’s more getting up in the middle of the night and writing ideas down,” Sue Paterno said of her husband. “More going to work at one or two in the morning. If something goes through his mind, he can’t sleep.”
    Had outsiders been able to observe him they would have seen a man who, despite having a contract about to expire, was not ready to quit. Quit? Hell, he was so excited he could hardly sleep. He made mental lists of problems that needed addressing. And given his 2003 team’s rap sheet and woeful statistics, they were lengthy. Eleven Penn State players had been cited or arrested. On the field, the Lions’ lone victories had come at home, against three perennial weak sisters, Temple, Kent State, and Indiana. Those teams’ combined win–loss record was 8–28.
    Paterno believed his last team had lacked heart and character. They hung in games until adversity arrived and then, typically in the fourth quarter, folded. Penn State had blown late leads to Nebraska, Northwestern, and Ohio State in 2003. They drew close to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Purdue but extinguished themselves late in those losses.
    Though he remained convinced physical conditioning was not a major reason why the 2003 Lions collapsed, he had his players lift more in the winter, run more in the spring.
    â€œHe wants to see who are the guys who are going to step up and make plays in the clutch, when you’re tired, fatigued, sweating,breathing hard, because that’s what it’s going to take to win those fourth quarters,” junior center E. Z. Smith said.
    The needs of their legs, arms, and torsos addressed, he turned to where he felt the real problems existed—in their hearts and minds.
    â€œI don’t think we’ve been tough enough mentally in the clutch,” Paterno said.
    He had been disappointed with some of his now-departed players, particularly guys like Tony Johnson and offensive tackle Chris McKelvey who were constantly in his doghouse and didn’t seem to care. The locker room lacked leaders. There had been few wise elders for the underclassmen to turn to in tough times. As a