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A record crowd, eager to see Joe Paterno tie the all-time wins record, instead watches No. 2 Miami cruise to a 33-7 victory.
By BOB HARIG
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 2, 2001
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Happy Valley, huh? Not Saturday night. And perhaps not for the rest of this season.
Typically a place where opponents are only happy after they leave, Beaver Stadium turned out to be quite an accommodating venue for the Hurricanes, who quickly dispensed with the distractions and cruised to 33-7 victory against Penn State.
It wasn't supposed to be so easy.
The Nittany Lions chose the first game of the season to have Adam Taliaferro, a sophomore who was temporarily paralyzed in a game last season, lead them onto the field, an emotional scene. It was a chance for their legendary coach, Joe Paterno, to tie the all-time Division I-A victory mark. And a newly renovated and expanded stadium buzzed with a record 109,313 fans.
Maybe they ought to consider downsizing.
Penn State fans must wait at least another game for Paterno to tie Paul "Bear" Bryant's record of 323 victories. They might have to wait even longer to see their beloved Nittany Lions return to glory as one of the premier programs in the country.
The second-ranked Hurricanes scored on their first five drives and six of their first seven, piled up 602 yards and took the starch out of the more-than-capacity crowd.
"We knew what we were getting into," UM offensive tackle Joaquin Gonzalez said. "The had the big crowd, Adam Taliaferro, all those big things. Those things don't win football games. We came in and executed."
By halftime, UM led 30-0, the largest halftime deficit for Penn State in 13 years and biggest for Paterno at home. His team had just 67 yards in the first 30 minutes. UM quarterback Ken Dorsey, who finished with 20 completions in 27 attempts for 344 yards, threw three touchdowns: Ethenic Sands (27 yards), Najeh Davenport (28) and Jeremy Shockey (10). And so the Hurricanes could start looking ahead ... to Rutgers.
The win was the first for first-year UM coach Larry Coker, who held the program together in the days after Butch Davis' sudden resignation in January, then got his first coaching job several days later.
Not bad, beating Paterno to a pulp in Game 1.
"When I got the job, I was elated," Coker, 53, said. "I was like a kid in a candy store. I never stopped to think about the schedule. Then (UM athletic director) Paul Dee said, 'You know, we open at Penn State, Happy Valley.' It kind of dampened my spirits.
"We beat a great football tradition. Emotion was on their side. But we could control the battle on the field, and that's what we did."
In the long run, Saturday night's victory might not mean anything. Is UM that good, or is Penn State that bad? Or is it a bit of both? No question, the Hurricanes have national championship potential. On the other hand, the Nittany Lions were coming off a 5-7 season, Paterno's worst in 35 years, and are nowhere near the level of the past. They have lost 11 of their past 16.
"This is a young team," Paterno had cautioned.
Paterno said Miami might be "close to being as good a football team to ever come into State College in the 50 years I've been here."
Indeed, no one could remember a team as heavily favored as the 'Canes (131/2 points) coming to Happy Valley going back 571 games to Paterno's first season in 1966. And yet, Paterno's words were viewed as so much coachspeak. Of course he would build up the opponent. Of course he would poor-mouth his team. With the trap set, Penn State would be poised for an ambush, with a clear psychological edge.
Instead, Paterno's warning turned out to be more prophetic than he had hoped.
UM tailback Clinton Portis suggested early last week that if the Nittany Lions stacked the line of scrimmage to force a young group of UM receivers to perform, the Hurricanes might score "60 or 70 points."
Without 14 penalties for 120 yards, Portis might have been right. Portis had 136 yards in the first half and finished with 164 yards on 17 carries.
Turns out Penn State needed nine players in the box -- and nine in the backfield, too.
"I think our experience last year in playing in hostile environments, games at Washington and West Virginia and Syracuse, helped us out a lot," Dorsey said. "We knew how it would be to play a game like this. We knew they had emotion on their side, that they would be motivated to beat us. I think it's mental. You have to block it out."