Linebacker U is renowned for producing stars at football's quintessential position.
It is a place where everybody is 6' 3" tall, weighs 230 pounds and has eyes like the gun slits in a tank. The matriculants at Linebacker U have names like Onkotz, Laslavic, Parlavecchio, Goganious and Radecic--steel mill names--and they are all the big men on campus. To be fashionable there, you could wear a bolt in your neck, if you had a neck.
Linebacker U is not a school, it's a time warp---college football's very own' Brigadoom--a mythical place that regularly seeks to conquer the mythical national championship. For nearly 30 years the best linebackers in America have made their way to the hills of central Pennsylvania and transformed the campus of Penn State University (a very real place) into Linebacker U (a very unreal one, particularly if you happen to be a ballcarrier). There in Happy Valley they lace on the black cleats that make their feet appear to be perpetually muddy, as if they have just emerged from the primordial ooze. At other schools, in deference to glamour, the quarterback invariably gets the girl. At Penn State the linebacker does.
Southern Cal used to call itself Tailback U, but it has been awhile since anybody from that school went Student Body Right to a Heisman Trophy. For a long time Alabama was known as the home of great college quarterbacks--Joe Namath and Ken Stabler, to name two. In the '80s Brigham Young and Miami shared that mantle. Now it belongs to no one. Linebacker U has outlasted all of those strongholds.
Though the name suggests subordination, linebacker is the quintessential football position, requiring both quickness and size, for its practitioners spend as much time traveling backward as forward. At Penn State the emphasis has always been on how quickly the swarm can sting. "We'd like them to have good speed, but the ability to accelerate is the most important thing," say's Jerry Sandusky, the Nittany, Lions' linebacker no coach for the past 25 years.
When Joe Paterno became head coach in 1966; he and an assistant coach named Dan Radakovich installed a defensive system that used four linebackers rather than the customary three. If these weren't exactly the Four Horsemen outlined against a blue-gray October sky, they were certainly a gathering storm. The positions were even given names--Hero, Fritz, Mike, Backer and, later, Sam--like those of Top Gun pilots.
Over the intervening 28 years, nine Penn State linebackers have been named first-team All-Americas. Thirty-three of Paterno's former players .have been linebackers in the NFL, and yet only Ed O'Neil, in 1974, and Shane Conlan, in '87, were taken in the first round of the pro draft, indicating that these were not supermen in the mold of North Carolina's Lawrence Taylor, who was chosen No. 1 by the New York Giants in 1981.
Sandusky joined the staff as the offensive line coach in 1968 and became the linebacker guru in 1970, when Radakovich left to join the staff at the University of Cincinnati. Four years later Radakovich moved to the Pittsburgh Steelers and helped devise the Steel Curtain defense. Sandusky, who had a chance to go to Temple as the head coach in 1988 but turned it down to remain the dean of Linebacker U, wrote a book published in 1977 called Developing Linebackers, The Penn State Way. Sandusky is not the liveliest of raconteurs, but the book's absence from the best-seller list undoubtedly had more to do with the fact that the Penn State way of developing great linebackers has always been to recruit them.
"There have been so many great players here, you'd be crazy to go someplace else if you want to be a linebacker," Trey Bauer, who played for the Lions from 1984 to '87, has said. "Penn State recruits great athletes at linebacker, but I don't really think they handle them any differently. The coaches pretty much stay with the basics every single day."
Greg Buttle left Penn State in 1976 as the school's all time leading tackler, with 343, and once had 24 tackles in a game against West Virginia. Buttle had played quarterback and receiver in addition to linebacker in high school but wanted nothing more than to be a Hero for the Nittany Lions. "Buttle was a guy who, when we recruited him, came right out and said he was coming here because he wanted to be a Penn State linebacker," says Sandusky.
That tradition is Penn State's most effective tool in resupplying the linebacker larder. "Kids look at that," Paterno says succinctly. Sandusky believes it is best to be subtle, however, on recruiting visits. "It's nothing we really talk about much," he says. "They are aware of a tradition, and we hope they would want to feel a part of that, but we just leave it mostly unspoken. For an athlete who has the abilities and the confidence we want, it's a plus. But there also may be instances when people think we have so many linebackers that they get frightened off."
Ah, but if the Penn State linebacker were so easily frightened, he would not be a Penn State linebacker. "I'm proud to be part of that tradition," says Washington Redskin linebacker Andre Collins, who was named All-America as a senior in 1989. "I go out there and try to uphold the honor."
Outsiders have long marveled at the continuity of the Lions' success at the position and wondered if Paterno or Sandusky had some special magic, but it is probably the continuity itself--27 years of coaching together--that has accounted for much of their success. Buttle once said of Sandusky, "He was the best coach I've ever been around. Once he gets his four guys, he doesn't teach by rote but by example. It's, 'Watch how I do this.'
"But there's another reason," Buttle continued. "When you go out for your first spring practice, there are 50 guys trying to fill four linebacking spots. I'm not talking about 50 guys recruited as linebackers, I'm talking about 50 athletes. There are 10 quarterbacks, there are wide receivers. There are 50 guys who Joe thinks are the best athletes, so he decides to try them at linebacker."
The spiritual sire of this great clan is Dennis Onkotz, an All-America in 1968 and '69, who was so quick that in addition to playing linebacker he returned punts. Onkotz played beside Jack Ham, who was a unanimous choice for All-America in 1970. After Onkotz graduated, Ham played with Charlie Zapiec, an All-America in 1971, and John Skorupan (1972).
Ham begat Jim Laslavic, Lance Mehl, O'Neil, Rich Milot, Kurt Allerman and Buttle, who Paterno once said was "as good a linebacker as we've ever had." Chet Parlavecchio, Walker Lee Ashley, Keith Goganious, Mark D'Onofrio and Rich McKenzie all distinguished themselves at the U. The best linebacker who didn't play linebacker at Penn State was Matt Millen, who was moved to the defensive line after his freshman season because the Lions needed size up front. It wasn't until he reached the NFL--and became the only player ever to win Super Bowl championships with three different teams (the Oakland and L.A. Raiders, the San Francisco 49ers and the Washington Redskins) that Millen returned to linebacker.
Conlan may have been the best of the big-game players, first shutting down Oklahoma quarterback Jamelle Holieway in the 1986 Orange Bowl, then Heisman winner Vinny Testaverde of Miami in the Fiesta Bowl the following season. Holieway had been averaging nearly 100 yards a game rushing, but with Conlan isolating on him, he gained a total of one yard in 12 carries. Conlan intercepted two Testaverde passes in the '87 Fiesta to lead Penn State to a 14-10 victory and the national championship. "He's the same kind of athlete Jack Ham was--intelligent, intense, consistent," Paterno has said. "We never asked a linebacker to do as many things as we asked him to do."
Collins learned gang tackling around the dinner table as the 12th of 19 children. He had been a reserve safety of little promise until '88, when he was moved to linebacker and made a name for himself. "I think Andre is probably as good a linebacker as we have had around here," Paterno said, sounding downright effusive.
By the mid-'80s it was getting easier to spot the great linebackers because there were fewer of them. In 1985 Penn State had only seven linebackers in the NFL, third in the country, behind Alabama, which had eight, and O1' Tailback U, Southern California. There were 14 ex-Trojans playing linebacker in pro camps that summer, 12 of whom made it onto rosters.
The drought was at its worst in '88, '91 and '92, when there were only five Nittany Lion alums in the NFL, but things at L.U. began to return to the familiar with Collins and Goganious, and the '94 season was graced by the classic black-cleated form of Brian Gelzheiser, who added his name to the honor roll of Lion 'backers.
If history is our guide, Linebacker U will not only survive, but thrive. Hero, Fritz, Mike, Backer and Sam wouldn't have it any other way
PREPPED FOR THE PROS
Forty Penn State players have gone on to play linebacker in the NFL. Here are 16 of the best.
Name Years at Penn State NFL Career
Dave Robinson 1960-62 12years (Packers, Redskins)
Ralph Baker 1961-63 11 (Jets)
Dennis Onkotz 1967-69 I (Jets)
Jam Ham 1968-70 12 (Steelers)
John Skorupan 1970-72 8 (Bills, Giants)
Ed O'neil 1971-73 7 (Lions, Patriots, Packers)
Greg Buttle 1973-75 9 (Jets)
Kurt Allerman 1974-76 9 (Cardinals, Packers, Lions)
Rich Milot 1977-78 9 (Redskins)
Matt Millen 1976-79 12 (Raiders, 49ors, Redskins)
Lance Mehl 1977-79 8 (Jets)
Walker Lee Ashley 1979-82 8 (Vikings, Chiefs)
Scott Radecic 1980-83 10 (Chiefs, Bills, Colts)
Shane Conlan 1983-86 8 (Bills, Rams)
Andre Collins 1986-89 5 (Redskins)
Mark D'Onofrio 1988-91 2 (Packers)