Penn State's '94 team remembered: "If we would have had to score 150, ... we would have.''
Penn State quarterback Drew Allar, meeting with the media Tuesday, said he's spent some time with members of the school's legendary 1994 team.
Later, he amended that to really only one member, Kerry Collins, the all-American 1994 QB who has spent time with Allar because quarterbacks are natural collaborators.
Pressed a bit on his understanding of the story of the 1994 team, which was honored Saturday at Beaver Stadium, Allar stumbled a bit.
"I know they were Big Ten champs, national champs, or something like that,'' Allar said. "I know there was like, some kind of controversy, ... I couldn't tell you exactly, but I know they mean a lot to this community.''
The point here is not a "these kids today, ... rant.'' Allar was 10 years from birth in 1994. And it seems that some people who lived through it remember it wrong.
The 1994 Lions might have had the best offense in college football history. They averaged 47 points per game. Collins, from Lebanon, running back Ki-Jana Carter and tight end Kyle Brady were top-1o picks in the 1995 NFL draft. Offensive linemen Marco Rivera and Jeff Hartings had long NFL careers and got Super Bowl rings.
Critically, they played a creative, wildly varied style of offense supposedly out of character for conservative-by-reputation Joe Paterno.
"Joe knew what he had,'' Brady said last week. "And he leaned on us pretty hard. The pressure we faced in the game didn't replicate what we faced in practice.''
Keith, "Goon,'' Conlin, an offensive linemen on that team, is even more confident.
"If we would have had to score 150 to beat somebody, we would have,'' he said last week.
But Conlin also recalled that, "The Old Man (Paterno) always told us, we're gonna have a day where it's not going right for you and you've really got to dig down and you've got to win that game you weren't supposed to win."
It came in November in Champaign, Illinois. The Illini, appropriately enough Saturday;s opponent, had an elite defense led by future NFL linebackers Simeon Rice, Kevin Hardy and Dana Howard.
The Lions woke up that morning in a Champaign hotel that had lost electricity. Pregame meetings were held in the dark. The pregame meal was hoagies, pizza and Pepsi.
"In warmups, guys were burping all over the place,'' Conlin recalled.
Collins threw an early interception. Carter lost an early fumble. Soon the Lions were down 21-0. Against one of the country's most talented defenses.
The offense kept coming. Penn State's final drive began at its own eight. Collins threw strike after strike, and fullback Brian Milne eventually bulled into the end zone to win it, 35-31.
The drama of that day did not translate, thanks to college football's then system of polls and bowls determining a quasi-national champion.
The impression we now have of the poll/bowl system was that if one team was ranked ahead of another, it pretty much stayed that way unless the higher-ranked team lost.
In 1994, not so much.
On Oct. 29 of that season, week seven, Penn State was the number one-ranked team in the country, beat Ohio State 63-14 and dropped in the rankings.
Penn State led 35-0 at halftime.
Collins went 19-23 passing for 265 yards and said, after the game, "This is as well as I've played and as good as I've ever felt at any time in athletics," Collins said.
The previous week, Penn State was ranked third, and won at No. 5 Michigan, 31-24. It thereby jumped over Colorado and Nebraska to No. 1.
The following week, while the Nittany Lions were carving the Buckeyes, No. 3 Nebraska handled No. 2, in Lincoln, 24-7.
That was good enough to jump the Huskers to No. 1 for good.
None of this spot-jumping would matter given a circa 2024 12-team playoff, or in the four-team playoff system in place from 2014-2023.
Many citizens of Nittany Nation believe the week after Ohio State, when Penn State didn't beat Indiana badly enough (35-29, after a garbage-time rally by the Hoosiers in Bloomington) cost Penn State the natty.
It didn't. Penn State was No. 2 for good by that point. That Nebraska had labored past Wyoming 42-32 at home Oct. 1 was by then ancient history, apparently.
Both Penn State and Nebraska held serve the rest of the regular season, but could not play for the championship because of conference bowl ties, specifically the Rose Bowl's tie to the Big Ten and Pac-12 champs.
Penn State idled past Oregon 38-20 in the Rose, and Nebraska edged No. 3 Miami in an excellent Orange Bowl.
The '94 players, who gathered in State College Saturday, have no doubt what would have happened if they'd gotten to play Nebraska.
"I'm confident we would have found a way - I think we'd have scored somewhere in the area of 31 points, and they might have gotten in the 20s,'' Brady mused. "I've been around some of those (Nebraska) guys over the years, and, of course, they have no doubt the other way.''
Keith, "Goon,'' Conlin, an offensive linemen on that team, is even more confident.
"If we would have had to score 150 to beat somebody, we would have,'' he said last week.
