It’s another beautiful fall in Happy Valley. Know what that means? It’s time for Penn State football -- and the National Hockey League!

How many people in Happy Valley would ever associate Penn State football with the NHL? Well in my world, the two are inseparable.

Not because my Penguins are the defending Stanley Cup Champions (I know how that makes all my Flyers friends cringe!). Not because the NHL on HDTV is the best thing to happen to hockey broadcasts in 20 years. Not even because I have a ticket to the Pens home opener to see the Stanley Cup banner be raised to roof of Mellon Arena on Friday night

It’s because without Penn State’s Joe Paterno, I may never had gotten my chance to work in the NHL and wouldn’t still be playing in the NHL to this very day.

What’s that, you didn’t know that I still play in the NHL? Where do you live, under a rock? Heck, I even scored a goal last week in our season opener. It’s the biggest bang for the buck for slapstick (or should I say slapshot?) comedy in all of State College. I am talking about the courageous and brave men and women (women in the NHL?) who lace ’em up every Saturday morning and Sunday night in Happy Valley’s adult hockey league -- the NITTANY HOCKEY LEAGUE!

Go ahead and laugh, just because we sometimes have to get up for the 6:30 a.m. game at the Greenberg Ice Rink on a Saturday morning or stay up until 10:45 p.m. on a Sunday night. The teams have bizarre names like the Flatliners, the Wizzards, the Blues, CCM, the Vikings, the Moose, the Capitals, the Wolves and of course my team, the always feared but never revered Geo Habs.

Where did that name come from? Well, anyone who follows hockey is aware that the Montreal Canadians’ main nickname is the Habs, an abbreviation of “Les Habitants.” The Geo Habs were founded in 1980 by a group of adults who were discovered engaging in ice hockey at the rink. The group consisted of individuals from the Geology Department at the university, a number of whom came from the Great White North and upstate New York. This included founding member Dr. Rudy Slingerland, professor of geosciences; Dr. Tim White, senior research associate in geosciences; and Dr. Don Fisher, professor of geosciences. Brian Reuss, general manager for SATCOM Technologies, is the current team’s player rep and star defenseman.

The list of those who risk life and limb on the ice is rather impressive and probably includes a friend or neighbor you may recognize:

Dr. Michael Berube, the Paterno Professor of Literature in Liberal Arts; Dr. Dennis McLaughlin, department head and professor of aerospace engineering;

Dr. Jim Marden, professor of biology; Dr. Mike Feffer, anesthesiologist at Mt. Nittany Medical Center; Bill Guzik, president of Sound Technology; Brett Anderson, on-air personality for AccuWeather, Inc.; Tim Holdcroft, sales executive for Xerox; Bob Leahey, president of G.M. McCrossin, Inc.; Gary Stidsen, product manager at Restek and head coach of the State High hockey team; John Tait of Tait Farms; and many more.

We have had father and son duos, such as Dr. David Wilson, professor emeritus in the Smeal College of Business, and son Andy Wilson, an English teacher and the faculty advisor for the State High hockey team; brothers Tom Jordan, magisterial district judge and Dave Jordan, a law enforcement investigator for the Office of the Attorney General (nobody messes with them); and brothers and local businessmen Mark and Jay Horgas, and Craig Polen.

Our female players have included Tina Hay, editor of The Penn Stater magazine; Fran McDermid, program coordinator for Strawberry Fields and former PSU swimmer; Grace Reuss, IT Coordinator at Hawbaker, Inc.; and current Lady Icers head coach Mo Stroemel.

Finally, the Commish is Ron Weis, a retired architect for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, who at age 70 still laces them up two or three times a week.

A particularly interesting chap who plays in the NHL is my next-door neighbor, John Wilcock. A project manager at Minitab for its foreign language products, John hails from Bedford, England. He started skating as a teenager while in high school in Germany, but didn’t start playing hockey until he attended Durham University in England. There was always a good mix of Brits and ex-Pats playing, including Americans, Canadians and Swedes. When he moved to the United States, one of the few things that came with him was his hockey equipment.

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OK, OK, you get it -- the Nittany Hockey League IS the NHL. But what does that have to do with Penn State football?

Flashback to 1980, when that incredible group of college kids who represented the USA in the Olympics pulled off the greatest upset in all of sport by beating the best team ever to lace up skates, the Soviet Union, in tiny Lake Placid, N.Y. It is a story made famous by the movie “Miracle,” starring Kurt Russell (whose real-life son is a goalie and almost came to school here at PSU).

I was absolutely riveted by what I experienced. It was a life-changing moment when I realized I don’t want to be an engineer. I wanted to follow my passion and be involved in hockey as a career (a big thank you to Penn State D.U.S. advisor Jim Kelly for pressing me to do what I love). A kid who grew up in Pittsburgh and never played major college or professional hockey wanted a career in the sport best known at that time for Paul Newman’s portrayal of Reggie Dunlop (R.I.P.) in the cult classic “Slapshot.”

Yeah, made about that much sense to my dad as well. “You want to quit engineering and do what?” So I switched to business, became the VP and eventually president of the Penn State Icers Hockey Club, and the rest is (my) history.

Well a funny thing happened on this little trip. Philip and Barbara Greenberg decided to donate enough money to build both a new football office complex as well as an ice rink. My dreams had come true. After two years of practicing on a temporary outdoor rink or traveling to Johnstown or Mechanicsburg to play “home” games, we were getting a brand new ice rink!

Well, ever the enterprising young man, I got together with a few of my more radical hockey buddies and we took our case for varsity status right to the top, to the PSU athletics director at the time, one Joseph V. Paterno. That’s right, JoePa himself was AD for a short period of time – and, as fate would have it, it was right when I was an officer of the hockey club trying to persuade him to grant us varsity status.

After our fourth meeting, he wrote me a very nice letter, which said, “I sure have to hand it to you Joe, you are persistent.” Translated, that meant I was one big pain in the rear end!

Fast forward to the spring of my senior year. I was trying to get an internship or job with the Pittsburgh Penguins. I wrote to Paul Steigerwald, the current play-by-play announcer for the Pens on Fox Sports. At that time, he was the director of marketing. I got nowhere. I sent packets of examples of all the “hands on” projects I did as VP and President of the Icers. Nothing, not a call, not a note acknowledging that they had received my materials. Nada!

Then it hit me. The Pens were owned by a nice, old Italian gentleman named Ed DeBartolo, Sr. The president of the Pens was a former sports attorney named Paul Martha. The same Paul Martha that was an All-American at Pitt and later played seven seasons in the NFL. The same Paul Martha that JoePa had recruited to be a Nittany Lion.

Eureka!!! I made one last phone call to the AD/head football coach, whose office just happened to be -- you guessed it -- connected to the Greenberg Ice Rink! I asked, no begged, Coach Paterno to write me a letter of recommendation addressed to Paul Martha. He did so willingly (to get rid of me once and for all…little did he know!).

Well that did it. I got a phone call a week later telling me when to begin. What, no interview? Nah, JoePa’s letter was all I needed.

I started as an intern and within three months was hired full-time as assistant to the marketing director and director of amateur hockey development. I was asked to fill in as coach of the Jr. Penguins and I began what would become a 25-year stint as a hockey coach and coaching instructor for USA Hockey.

Along the way I worked at camps, at clinics and on projects with the likes of Herb Brooks, 1980 Olympic coach, and his assistant, Craig Patrick (who, by the way, sent his sons C.J. and Ryan and nephew Curtiss to attend school and play hockey at PSU!). I also worked with Lou Vairo, the 1984 U.S. Olympic team coach; former Wisconsin and Penguins coach “Badger” Bob Johnson; the Detroit Red Wings “Mr. Hockey,” Gordie Howe; Boston Bruin greats Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito; the “Great One,” Wayne Gretzky; and my friend to this day, “The Magnificient One,” Mario Lemieux.

So, as far as I am concerned, Penn State football and the NHL will always resonate as inseparable to this lover of all things Blue and White and all things played on ice!

By the way, it still is a dream of mine to bring the NHL Winter Classic to Beaver Stadium. Can you picture it, on one side of the stadium we have “soda” and “Pat’s Cheesesteaks” and across the way we sell “pop” and “Primanti Brothers” sandwiches? We would break the world record for attendance of 74,000 set when Michigan played Michigan State at Spartan Stadium in 2001.

How about that? Hockey in a football stadium. Makes perfect sense to me!