When he was at Penn State, he was No. 60. In the NFL, he was No. 55. Now, Matt Millen is wearing a patient number as he lies in a New Jersey hospital waiting for a heart transplant to save his life.
To those who have known him, it’s almost unthinkable that this man, so full of fight on the field, is now in a fight for his life.
In the 41 years I covered Penn State football, I was fortunate enough to have met and come to know literally thousands of players.
During much of that time, when the media had access to the players one-on-one in the locker room, you got to know them as people, not players. You were able to build relationships, gain their trust. It was an era when covering the team was fun.
And no one made it more fun that Millen, the free-spirited, no BS linebacker turned defensive tackle from 1976-79.
He gained fame as a player, earning four Super Bowl rings in the NFL and, later, as a television analyst who explained what he saw in a homey style that made him likeable, as well as informative.
But as I listened to him game after game, I couldn’t help but think back to his early years as a player at Whitehall High and at Penn State.
I can still recall a lengthy phone conversation I had with him in the fall of 1979. It was a pre-arranged interview that just happened to take place a day or two after Joe Paterno had kicked him off the team for failing to run a half mile in a required time. It was, as Paterno said, a bad example for a captain.
In one of his many run-ins with the coach, Millen told Paterno if he had to chase a guy for a half mile, he was probably going to score anyway.
As he told me years after he was out of Penn State, “I could never be around Joe without saying something smart.’’
What he told me during the course of that interview still resonates, and it completely explains just how tough, how unique and how feisty he is.
He was an All-State Big 33 choice as a senior at Whitehall, but almost didn’t get to play his senior season. An elbow injury suffered during his junior year had allowed calcium to build in the joint, preventing him from straightening his arm. A doctor told him he would never get it straight and his football career was over. That doctor might as well have told the sun not to shine.
Millen decided to treat himself for the injury. First, he submerged the elbow in scalding water, trying to soften the calcium deposit. That didn’t work.
Next, he put his elbow in a vice and had a teammate, Ron Gall, a lineman who went to Maryland, apply as much downward pressure as possible, trying to break the deposit. That didn’t work either.
Undeterred, he came up with another idea. His coach had given him a key to the weight room — he was a dedicated lifter before it became popular — so he decided to try doing bicep curls. That worked. The calcium deposit crumbled.
After his senior season, the offers from various colleges poured in. Everyone wanted the hard-nosed kid from Hokendauqua.
Among his visits was a trip to Colorado, and for a while it looked as though he was going to be a Buffalo. But as signing-day approached, he wasn’t certain.
One day, the late John Chuckran, a Penn State assistant coach assigned to recruit Millen, stopped by Whitehall to talk to him. Millen, almost on a whim, told Chuckran he would sign with Penn State.
As it turned out, his letter-of-intent was at home, but when they went there they couldn’t find it. One of Millen’s younger sisters liked John Denver’s song “Rocky Mountain High,” and she wanted her brother to go there, so she hid his letter-of-intent from Penn State so he couldn’t sign it.
Chuckran called back to Penn State and had another letter flown to Allentown for Millen to sign.
We spent close to an hour on the phone that Saturday morning as he poured his heart out, telling me Paterno had told him he could easily have him signed with a Canadian Football League team, that he was done at Penn State.
As we all know, that didn’t happen. He was allowed to rejoin the team, although his captaincy was never restored. And, he finished his career on the sidelines against Pitt due to an injury. Obviously, he recovered and went on to play for the Oakland Raiders, San Francisco 49ers and Washington Redskins, winning a Super Bowl ring at each stop. At each place, he was valued as much for his leadership and character as for his ability as a run-stopping inside linebacker.
I usually connected with him once a year at each stop to do a story about his situation that particular season. He was always available and our conversations were always enjoyable. The same held true when he was the president of the Detroit Lions.
As I mentioned earlier, I was lucky enough to get to know thousands of Penn State players during my career, and while the list of favorites is a long and includes John Cappelletti, John Shaffer, Matt Suhey, Todd Blackledge and Steve Smear, Matt Millen is No. 1.
Now, he needs a lift from all of his fans out there. If you’re so inclined, offer up a prayer for him. I know I will. He has earned it.
