THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 21, 1997 TAG: 9701210373
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ED MILLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 100 lines
Brandon Noble was not there, but he has a good idea of what Penn State coach Joe Paterno told his returning players the other day, when he called them together for a team-wide ``squad'' meeting.
``Let's get down to work,'' said Noble, a senior from Virginia Beach who has completed his college football career. ``Let's not have any stupid distractions. Don't go out and get into trouble.''
That's what players for Paterno - the keynote speaker at tonight's Norfolk Sports Club Jamboree - have been able to avert year after year, decade after decade. For the most part, and as much as any big-time program in the nation, they avoid trouble. They avoid the ``distractions'' - coachspeak for things like fights, sexual assaults and drunk-driving arrests - that plague some other programs, including the program run by a man who will share the dais with Paterno tonight, Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer.
Small wonder that in a 1995 Newsday poll of Division I-A football coaches, Penn State was voted the nation's best-run program.
What Paterno has has taken decades to build. It's found at the point where discipline and tradition intersect. And it's summed up well by Noble, a First Colonial grad and one of three Nittany Lions from South Hampton Roads:
``It's Penn State,'' he said. ``We don't want to be the ones that screw up, that bring down the tradition.''
Who wants to disappoint a legend, one of the few true giants of college football, a 70-year-old man with 289 victories?
Noble didn't, and neither did his classmates. They passed that desire along to the players behind them, the same way it was handed down to them when they arrived.
``Everybody here realizes that when the older guys tell you not to get in fights, not to go out drinking, they're not doing it to be jerks,'' Noble said. ``There's a tradition here, an emphasis, that's always there.''
It's a tradition that's actively tended by the players, Noble says. Paterno, who did not return calls, expects the players to police each other, and nip problems before the coaches have to intervene.
``We have a thing called the Breakfast Club, where we meet with Joe, two players from each class,'' Noble said. ``If he has any problems, he'll tell us. He likes the team to take care of it first.
``We're not going to narc out one of our buddies,'' Noble said. ``But we'll deal with it as a team first.''
Call it peer pressure, Noble says.
``If I'm out hanging with my buddies, and somebody wants to come up to me and start something . . . even if I wanted to fight, my buddies wouldn't let me,'' Noble said.
Those interested in brawling probably wouldn't be at Penn State, anyway. Anthony King, a freshman from Norfolk's Granby High, says much of Penn State's off-field success starts in the recruiting process.
``A lot of it is the type of player they recruit,'' King said. ``They look at their history, the way they act, how much discipline they have. They find out what type of person they're recruiting.
``They certainly did checkups on me. They called around to see what kind of person I was.''
Of course, Penn State has the luxury of picking from the cream of the academic and athletic crop. But while everyone talks a good game during recruiting - about how academics come first, etc. - Noble says it rang truer coming from Penn State.
``Everybody says those things,'' Noble said. ``If I go back and look at the other schools that recruited me, a couple of them have had serious discipline problems.''
Problems off the field also inevitably lead to bad publicity. Penn State's latest local catch, Indian River's James Boyd, also considered Virginia Tech, but was turned off by the spate of off-the-field problems the Hokies suffered this season.
``They (Virginia Tech) have too many people in trouble,'' Boyd said when announcing he had chosen Penn State. ILLUSTRATION: NSC JAMBOREE
When: Tonight, 6 p.m.
Where: Omni Waterside Hotel
Emcee: Tim Brando, CBS Sports
Keynote speaker: Joe Paterno, Penn State University football
coach
Banquet tickets: $65 each. A table of 10 can be reserved for
$600.00
Info: 461-8600 or 497-9583
The honorees:
J. Roy Rodman Award, Virginia's outstanding college coach: Frank
Beamer, Virginia Tech football, presented by Tech alumnus and Tampa
Bay Buccaneers guard Jim Pyne
Gen. Douglas MacArthur Memorial Award, most outstanding American
college athlete who formerly attended a Virginia high school: Dre
Bly, University of North Carolina football, presented by Indian
River High School alumnus and Philadelphia Eagles defensive end
William Fuller
Leigh Williams Memorial Award, Virginia's outstanding college
athlete: Tiki Barber, University of Virginia football, presented by
ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan
Bob Bates Award, outstanding metropolitan scholastic coach: to be
announced
Ellis Loveless Memorial Award, outstanding metropolitan
scholastic athlete: to be announced
Tom Fergusson Memorial Award, Metropolitan man of the year in
sports: to be announced
Joe Brown Memorial Award, Sports Club member of the year: to be
announced