No. 1 and Still Climbing

For Penn State, once football's Avis, winning never Hertz

How good can a college football team be and still not rank No. 1 in the nation? Let Penn State count the ways. It has had 27 consecutive winning seasons and 40 straight years at .500 or better (both modern N.C.A.A. records). Its coach of 13 years, Joe Paterno, boasts the highest winning percentage (.833) of anyone still sending in signals after ten years of major college football warfare, including three unbeaten and untied seasons capped by victories in a major bowl (1968, 1969 and 1973).

Penn State did all this, and still remained the Avis of big-time college football. It was a frequent also-ran in the weekly A.P. and U.P.I, polls of sportswriters and coaches, but never was it No. 1. This year, however, the men from State College, Pa., finally made it to the top --first in all the polls and, after last week's 17-10 win over intrastate rival Pittsburgh, the only major unbeaten team left in the nation.

From such unfamiliar heights, Coach Paterno and his Nittany Lions are now preparing for a Sugar Bowl showdown with the Southeastern Conference champion. Paterno juggled bowl bids for a week because he wanted to make sure that Penn State would face its highest-ranked opponent.

Such maneuvering is a bit out of character for a school that talks football like the Ivy League but plays it like the Southwest Conference. (Penn State is, in fact, an independent.) Football has never been a mania at Penn State. Long before the N.C.A.A. this year clamped a 30-player annual limit on new recruits and a ceiling of 95 football scholarships overall, Paterno rarely recruited more than 25 players a year. By comparison, Oklahoma bestowed 40 to 50 scholarships a year before the new limits were imposed. Players point proudly to the absence of a jock aristocracy on the 27,000-student Penn State campus. There is no lush special housing for players; they live in regular dormitories, and curfews are virtually unknown. No player is allowed to lighten his academic load during the season, and some 94% of Penn State's footballers graduate on schedule after four years. Proclaims Paterno: "Football isn't everything. It's just another extracurricular activity, like science club or the band."

Paterno himself is just another slightly scholarly-looking tenured professor (health, phys-ed and recreation), though his pupils bring in $5 million in annual revenues and $2 million in profits, which is plowed back into sports facilities for the rest of the.student body. Phys-ed classes at Penn State have first call on the school's indoor arenas, so the Nittany Lions occasionally must sweep snow off their field in order to practice. Says Paterno: "We never had a rug in our locker room. We're more spartan, and it's more of a challenge. We recruit people who belong at Penn State academically as well as athletically. No one is a special person on our squad or in our school."

But Paterno's extracurricular-minded students have just completed a very special season. For all the pollsters' traditional suspicion that Eastern football is a pantywaist version of the brand played elsewhere, Penn State this year linked impressive victories over powerhouses with romps against also-rans. The Lions crushed Ohio State in Columbus, 19-0, a task akin to beating the original Lions in the Roman Colosseum, and mangled then fifth-ranked Maryland, 27-3, before a jubilant home crowd.

Penn State's victory over Pittsburgh was vintage Paterno: rugged defense and pyrotechnic offense. Anchored by junior Tackles Matt Millen and Bruce Clark, perhaps the finest pair of defensive linemen ever to play on the same college team, the Nittany Lions choked off the Pitt attack, forcing two fumbles and four interceptions.

Penn State has the nation's first-ranked rushing defense; its first ten victims gained an average of only 52 yds. a game, vs. 201 against, other teams. Pete Harris, brother of Pittsburgh Steeler Running Back (and Penn State alumnus) Franco Harris, leads college defensive backs with ten interceptions, and the Penn State secondary has proved that just as there is nowhere to run against the Lions, there is nowhere to throw either.

The Lions' offense rests on the arm of Quarterback Chuck Fusina and the foot of Kicker Matt Bahr, who is also the younger brother of a pro star, Cincinnati Bengals Kicker Chris Bahr. Fusina, a leading contender for the Heisman Trophy, holds 16 Penn State records. Says Paterno: "Chuck can go out and take control of the ball game."

So he did against Pitt, rallying the Lions from a 10-7 fourth-quarter deficit to a 17-10 win.

When the offense bogged down, there was always Bahr: he made good on an N.C.A.A.-record 22 field-goals, none of them shorter than 20 yds., and was 31 for 31 on points after touchdown.

As the Lions ground out their victory over Pitt last week, many of the 78,000 fans hunched against the cold at Penn State's Beaver Stadium took up the chant: "We're No. 1!" They've said that before at Penn State, but now almost everyone else is saying it, too.

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