Editor’s Note: This is the 12th of a 19-part daily series that seeks to answer the questions surrounding the 2010 Penn State football team. Check back every weekday until the Blue-White Game to see the question of the day. Monday, we asked: ‘What does Joe think of his team now?‘ Today, we ask: ‘What Was PSU’s Best Quarterback Battle Ever?‘
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Monday, Sept. 29, 1980. That’s when the best battle for the starting quarterback job at Penn State ended. The job was finally Todd Blackledge’s — for keeps.
The quarterback derby began in spring drills and lasted more than 200 days.
Thirty years later the Paternos, Joe and Jay, may take nearly as long to find a starter for the 2010 Nittany Lions. But naming a No. 1 quarterback this year is similar to the task three decades ago in name only.
The deed was more difficult in 1980 – the candidates oozed talent. And the deed was easier in 1980 – the candidates oozed talent.
It certainly took long enough. For good reason: The top two horses that emerged were both thoroughbreds. The winner ended up guiding Penn State to its first national championship and was a first-round pick in the NFL Draft. All the runner-up did was lead his NFL team to a Super Bowl Trophy.
When the 1979 season ended, though, those two quarterbacks were way down the depth chart. So much so, that Blackledge himself thought he was the oddest man out.
‘They haven’t given me any indication of where I stand yet,’ he said in January 1980. ‘I imagine I’ll start off as the No. 4 quarterback… I just want to go out and see what I can do.’
THE CONTENDERS
The four contenders to start the 1980 season as Penn State’s starting quarterback were:
Senior Dayle Tate, the starter for all 11 regular season games in 1979, broke his jaw during spring drills and his future was doubtful. His body was already battered – broken hand and collarbone, jammed thumb, an injured shoulder over the previous three seasons. And his ego was bruised by incessant booing after he guided a limping Penn State, still hurting from a failed fourth-and-goal in the Sugar Bowl, to an 8-4 record.
Sophomore Frank Rocco was the candidate with the most experience, although it was paltry at best. His career line read 10 of 29 passing, with 26 rushes for 117 yards. He did come off the bench to save a win against Temple in 1979, and he started against Tulane in the Liberty Bowl, which Penn State won 9-6.
Sophomore Jeff Hostetler, built like a linebacker, was the third brother (after Ron and Doug) to play for Paterno. He was only 6 of 17 passing as a true freshman in 1979.
And then there was Blackledge, who redshirted his freshman year in 1979 with a hand injury. He entered the 1980 season not yet having played a down in college – although he was a scout team wonder.
Spring practice that year was intense, to say the least.
‘Competition is always a real good thing to have,’ said Blackledge, speaking by telephone this week from his home in Ohio. ‘The position was undecided. And every day we were being evaluated, every day we were being graded. It added a great deal of energy to it all.’
BLUE BOMBS AND WHITE RIFLE ARMS
The quarterbacks’ collective coming-out party came on Saturday, May 3, 1980, in the Blue-White Game. It was the biggest passing explosion in spring scrimmage history.
Tate, his jaw wired shut, did not suit up and never played again. But Blackledge, Hostetler and Rocco were a combined 38 of 81 passing, for 580 yards, three interceptions and two touchdowns.
(Talk about offense: That day, the Nittany Lion scrimmagers ran 138 plays for 908 yards. There were 48 first downs, 328 rushing yards on 57 carries, and sophomore Curt Warner carried the ball 28 times for 124 yards.)
Blackledge was 14 of 31 for 256 yards, with two interceptions and two TDs. The scoring tosses were a 57-yarder to Tom Wise and a 61-yarder to Gregg Garrity.
Hostetler completed 14 of 26 for 223 yards, with a touchdown run.
And Rocco, battling bruised ribs, was 10 of 24 for 101 yards, with one interception – thrown on the game’s first play to his brother Dan, a Lion defense back who later transferred to Wake Forest.
(A personal aside: I had freshman English at Penn State with both Hostetler and Dan Rocco. Both eventually transferred. It wasn’t the prof’s fault, that’s for sure. Jack Selzer was quite possibly the best teacher I ever had. And unlike like his football protégés, Jack never left University Park.)
That Blue-White Game was Air Paterno’s inaugural flight, a precursor to an explosive air attack in 1982.
‘From a playing standpoint, I remember it being a competitive spring game,’ said Blackledge, the lead college football analyst for ESPN these days after an NFL career that included stops in Kansas City and Pittsburgh.
‘But the thing that sticks out in my mind is that my grandparents on my mother’s side saw me play football for the first time in that game. They had never seen me play, not even in high school. They lived five minutes from us in Canton and never came. But they ended up driving four hours to Penn State from Canton. They got hooked and never missed a game, home or away, after that.’
(For good reason. More on that later.)
AND THEN THERE WERE TWO
The Blue-White Game reduced the quarterback race to two — Blackledge and Hostetler.
‘When we came back in the summer, it was just like it was in the spring,’ with daily pressure, Blackledge said. ‘At that point it was Jeff and I.’
It stayed that way through preseason drills in August. Finally, just two days before the season opener against Colgate in Beaver Stadium, Paterno made up his mind.
‘Joe called me on that Thursday,’ Blackledge recalled. ‘He came over and picked me up in my dorm. We went for a drive in his car. We stopped to talk. Sitting on a bench, that’s when he told me: Jeff was going to start, but I was going to play too.’
With Hostetler as the starting quarterback, the Nittany Lions went 2-1. After beating Colgate 54-10 in the opener, they defeated Texas A&M 25-9 on the road and fell to Nebraska 21-7 in Lincoln.
In the first two games, Blackledge completed 12 of 19 passes for 148 yards. Hostetler was just 7 of 21 for 88 yards, with one touchdown passing and one running.
Hostetler didn’t last long against the Cornhuskers. He lost a fumble on the Lions’ second possession and was yanked in favor of Blackledge. Although Hostetler started the second half, he played sparingly and completed only one pass in four attempts, for 12 yards.
Blackledge threw three picks that day, and was only 6 of 17, but had 111 yards passing. He also had earned Paterno’s respect.
‘Todd showed a lot of potential at quarterback, but he also made some key mistakes,’ Paterno said after the game. ‘I thought about starting Blackledge in the second half, but I didn’t think that was fair to Jeff.’
Paterno had seen enough.
THE QUARTERBACK BATTLE ENDS
On the Monday afternoon after the Nebraska game, Blackledge walked into the Penn State locker room and spotted a blue jersey hanging in his locker. It was a color he had hadn’t seen before, at least with his equipment.
The blue jersey went to the team’s starter. Hostetler also had one that day. But not for long.
‘Walking into the locker room it was the first thing I saw when I got to practice on Monday,’ Blackledge said. ‘I had a hint it might happen. I played a majority of the second half against Nebraska.’
The job was Blackledge’s. And he responded. Oh, how he responded.
That Saturday, Penn State played at Missouri. Blackledge completed 9 of 19 passes for just 92 yards. His three interceptions were offset by his touchdown runs of one and 43 yards on his way to leading the Nittany Lions to a come-from-behind victory.
Over the next eight games of 1980, Blackledge never threw for more than 157 yards in a contest, while tossing for as few as nine yards. But he was a leader, and the Nittany Lions went 8-1 – including a 31-19 Fiesta Bowl victory over Ohio State — under his direction that season.
After the season Hostetler transferred to West Virginia, where he was successful on the field – and off it; he married the coach’s daughter. He, too, made it to the NFL and quarterbacked the New York Giants to a Super Bowl victory in 1990. Ironically, Hostetler was the starter only because Phil Simms went down late in the season with an injury.
Blackledge, for his part, led Penn State to records of 10-2 and 11-1 in 1981-82, giving him a three-year mark of 29-4 as a starter. Obviously, Paterno picked right.
A SWEET ENDING
The biggest win, of course, was in Blackledge’s final game as a Nittany Lion. On Jan. 1, 1983, in the Sugar Bowl against Georgia, he completed 13 of 28 passes for 228 yards and a touchdown.
The score came in the fourth quarter, on a 47-yard pass to Garrity – almost perfect symmetry: Blackledge’s second TD pass as a Lion was to Garrity, in that 1980 Blue-White Game, while his last was to the same receiver, 972 days later.
The touchdown put Penn State ahead for good, 27-23, and gave the Nittany Lions their first national championship.
The hardest part of it all? The quarterback battle of 1980.
‘That year,’ Blackledge now says, ‘certainly was different than the last two, that’s for sure.’
