Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [11]
The mother of four Penn State varsity athletes, and now mother-in-law of a fifth one, did not have the most objective opinion. Blackledge would go on to lead the Nittany Lions to twenty-one victories during the next two years, win the Davey O’Brien Award (given to the nation’s top quarterback), and deliver both Paterno and Penn State their first national championship in January 1983.
As much as it pained him, Jeff Hostetler chose to abandon his boyhood dream of playing football for the Nittany Lions.
It was probably the most difficult thing for me to do, to pull up and leave Penn State which I had a sister that was living up there—who married a player that I was a teammate of—I had all kinds of friends there, my two older brothers had gone there, and my younger brother was there on a baseball scholarship. So it was an extremely tough decision to make. But I knew the Lord had blessed me with an ability to play and I felt like he wanted to use me somewhere. And so I thought, “I have to go somewhere.”
Jim Kelly moved past his Penn State disappointment and committed to the University of Miami in the spring of 1978. Lou Saban, former head coach of the Buffalo Bills and newly hired man-in-charge for the Hurricanes program, personally flew to the Kelly home to ensure the signing.
An injury to Kelly’s ankle during training camp clinched the freshman’s status as a redshirt during the 1978 season, although he did run plays with the first team in practice. Having been a focal point of a balanced offense at East Brady, Kelly was unaccustomed to Saban’s run-oriented, option-style approach. The team’s star running back “would constantly complain because I could never get outside fast enough to get him the ball for the option. I just didn’t have the speed to keep up with him.”
“What’s wrong with you,” the player once yelled at Kelly.
“Hey, I ain’t no option quarterback,” he replied.
“Well, if you want to be on this damn team, you better become one.”
Kelly adhered to the player’s order: the entire offense had been designed around the running back, who everyone called “O. J.”
A year of experience sent Kelly into his second training camp poised to contend for the starter’s job. Also to his advantage was a complete overhaul to the Hurricane’s coaching staff. Saban left south Florida after just two seasons to take over the top post at West Point. The Hurricanes’ athletic department did not look far for a new head coach, bringing in Miami Dolphins offensive coordinator Howard Schnellenberger and his pro-style, balanced offense.
Once Bear Bryant’s top assistant at the University of Alabama—he famously recruited Joe Namath to Tuscaloosa—Schnellenberger worked in the pros under George Allen with the Los Angeles Rams and under Don Shula with the Miami Dolphins. In between, he had a brief stint as the head coach of the Baltimore Colts. In Baltimore, Schnellenberger learned a critical lesson in the nurturing of young quarterback talent.
“When I coached up there for one year, I had Marty Domres as the incumbent quarterback and Bert Jones as the [rookie] quarterback,” Schnellenberger recalled. “And like a rookie coach, I started Bert Jones in the opening game. I knew it was a big chance, but we would make quicker progress with him than with Marty Domres as the quarterback. But it turned out just like I feared. The offense wasn’t ready to win, the defense wasn’t ready to win, and Bert Jones had a really rough start up there and I almost ruined him. . . . When I got to Miami and saw a great potential in Jim Kelly, I didn’t want to screw that up again.”
Schnellenberger—who left Baltimore two years prior to Bert Jones winning the 1976 NFL MVP Award—chose sophomore Mike Rodrigue to start the 1979 season at quarterback. Rodrigue directed the Hurricanes to three wins in the first seven games, a characteristically modest record for a program that struggled to succeed, both financially and in the standings. The combination of gorgeous south Florida weather, a monopoly held by Shula’s two-time world champion