With No.4 Alabama set to take on No.20 Penn State in Beaver Stadium on Saturday, I recall the best one-liner Nittany Lions coach Joe Paterno ever uttered.
Former president Richard Nixon played football at Whittier College, although he spent the majority of his playing days watching games from the sidelines.
Nixon loved football, and in 1969 he invoked executive privilege when he declared the winner of the Texas-Arkansas “Game of the Century” would be that year’s college football national champion.
On December 6, 1969, the top-ranked Longhorns erased a 14-0 third quarter deficit and beat the second-ranked Razorbacks 15-14. Texas would go on to win the Cotton Bowl and indeed were crowned national champions.
Meanwhile, Paterno was in his fourth season at Penn State and had just guided the Nittany Lions to their second straight 11-0 record. Much to the chagrin of Penn State fans, Nixon didn’t mention the undefeated Nittany Lions for national championship consideration.
Four years later in 1973 with Nixon’s presidency crumbling as a result of the Watergate scandal, Paterno said this about the soon to be former president:
“I don’t know how Richard Nixon could know so much about college football in 1969 and so little about Watergate in 1973.”
Gotta love Joe Pa.
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