Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [7]
Attending public school meant that the children could compete in team sports. Ron was the first in the line of Hostetler boys to excel in athletics at Conemaugh Township High School. In the fall of 1972, his senior year, Ron and the Indians posted a 9-0 record and a narrow second-place finish in the Western Pennsylvania Conference standings.
Those football skills impressed head coach Joe Paterno to invite Ron to play for Penn State University. Roughly a two-hour drive from the family farm, Penn State was close enough to home, and he enrolled there for the fall 1973 semester. Recruited to play quarterback, by the start of Ron’s first season, Paterno moved the freshman to linebacker, where he would star for the Nittany Lions until a knee injury endangered his career. During the spring and summer of 1977, Ron, now a senior, worked his way back into shape. By August, he was ready to compete for one of the outside linebacker positions against the biggest threat to his reclaiming the starting job: his younger brother, Doug.
Even after Ron played his last game for Conemaugh in 1972, the following autumn, a Hostetler was under center for the Indians. A year younger than Ron, Doug followed his brother to Penn State in 1974. And, as he had with Ron, Joe Paterno soon converted the reluctant quarterback into a linebacker.
So when Jeff Hostetler entered Conemaugh High in the fall of 1975, his future had already been mapped out. He made the varsity as a freshman, then claimed his birthright as the Indians quarterback the following season. A linebacker on defense as well, the six-foot, 180-pounder earned all-county honors. Completing passes to another Hostetler boy, his younger brother, tight end Todd, Jeff guided Conemaugh to an 8-1 record as a junior and was again named an all-county quarterback. His senior year—the best time to impress college scouts handing out scholarships—was expected to be even better.
“I think he’ll be the most sought-after player in the state,” his head coach, Joe Badaczewski, said before the season opener. “He’s got the size, the arm and the running ability they look for.”
But a week later, Badaczewski moved Jeff to tailback so he could replace an injured starter. Todd Hostetler became the quarterback. With great speed and size, Jeff dominated as a runner and won the Southern Alleghenies Football Coaches Association award for Most Valuable Offensive Player. Parade Magazine also named him to their all-American team, as a linebacker. (A Californian named John Elway and a Pittsburgher named Dan Marino were named as the team’s quarterbacks.)
The Indians again went 8-1 and Jeff played whatever role the coach asked of him in order to win.
“The fact that I was good at [linebacker] caused me a lot of grief as I got older and kept pushing to achieve my life’s ambition—to be a winning quarterback.”
Although most newspapers listed him as a linebacker, Hostetler did garner attention as a quarterback from many top college programs. The Hostetler legacy and his achievements as a sophomore and junior luckily overshadowed his yearlong sabbatical at running back.
Approximately fifty schools offered scholarships. He visited the campuses of Stanford University, Notre Dame, and the University of Pittsburgh. But everyone expected, given the family history, that he would be in Happy Valley for fall classes in 1978. The choice was not quite that simple.
“It came down to my determination to play quarterback,” he remembered. “I didn’t want to go to a school that wouldn’t promise to let me play the position my heart was set on. It was something to worry about with Penn State, Joe Paterno or no Joe Paterno—or, maybe more to the point, because of Joe Paterno—because my brothers’ experiences had taught me that promises made can be promises broken.”
On February 21, 1979, Paterno drove through a snowstorm from State College to the Hostetler farm.