06/10/2024
This rousing debut oral history from sports reporter Raymond traces how the Penn State Nittany Lions rebounded following former coach Jerry Sandusky’s 2011 arrest for child sex abuse. Documenting the fallout from the scandal, Raymond notes that the players were left doubly shaken by the death of once-beloved coach Joe Paterno from cancer mere months after he was fired for failing to prevent Sandusky’s abuses, and that the NCAA’s decision to release players from “all obligations to the school” resulted in a “feeding frenzy” for recruiters. The players who stayed had a shaky return to the field in 2012 (“We were just so high-strung,” remembers defensive back Stephon Morris), but they gradually regained their groove under the stewardship of head coach James Franklin and won the 2016 Big Ten championship after triumphing against Wisconsin. The detailed play-by-plays of games excite (“You could feel it throughout your whole body. The whole stadium kind of just lifted up,” offensive lineman Brendan Mahon remembers of a touchdown scored on a blocked kick), and Raymond highlights the poignant stories of individual players, describing, for instance, how starting quarterback Christian Hackenberg’s red-hot career was derailed by a shoulder injury. A fine-grained account of how a beloved program reinvented itself, this scores. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office. (Aug.)
"Raymond highlights the poignant stories of individual players...A fine-grained account of how a beloved program reinvented itself, this scores." —Publishers Weekly
"[The athletes'] voices resound in this well-crafted, multivocal homage. Fans of Big Ten football will enjoy this tatters-to-touchdowns tale of gridiron redemption." —Kirkus Reviews
"This is a riveting story that does a terrific job of showing just how Penn State rebounded from such a horrific scandal, by walking the reader through each step of the process in great detail. This is a must-read for every Nittany Lion fan." —Bruce Feldman, college football reporter, FOX Sports and The Athletic
"From the ashes of an unspeakable scandal that incinerated the career of legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, there now comes an inspirational story of rebirth. Chronicled in this comprehensive oral history by journalist Chris Raymond, himself an ardent Nittany Lions alum, Men in White details the improbable resurrection of this once-indomitable college football program from the shame that engulfed it in the backwash of the Jerry Sandusky sexual predator calamity. Within these pages is the tale of courageous young men with whom one would be proud to share a foxhole." —Mark Kram, Jr., bestselling author of Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier
“It’s a story bigger than football. We hear that cliché a lot, but it’s true. Those kids taught me about overcoming adversity. When things are tough, you find out a lot about the character of a man. And those five seasons tell you everything you need to know about Penn State football.” —Charlie Fisher, Quarterbacks Coach, Penn State 2012-2013
“So much of 21st Century America is defined by self-inflicted crises at the top, leaving those below to clean up the mess. In visceral and poignant prose, Chris Raymond shows how a group of young men tried to rebuild honor in a tarnished institution. Penn State should name the library after these players and coaches.” —Seth Wickersham, ESPN Senior Writer and author of the instant New York Times bestseller It’s Better to Be Feared
2024-05-25
The Nittany Lions claw their way back to life after a terrible year in this lively combination of color commentary and oral history.
Sportswriter Raymond, a Penn State alum who covered the school’s football team as a student journalist, opens with events that are now dimly receding into the past but were then shockingly immediate. In 2011, longtime coach Jerry Sandusky, who had been retired for more than a decade, was arrested for dozens of incidents of child molestation. Soon after, the school’s president and its famed head coach, Joe Paterno, were fired. Hired away from the New England Patriots, new coach Bill O’Brien was barely on the ground when the NCAA imposed a series of stringent sanctions, including the erasure of 111 wins, thus “dropping Paterno from first to fifth in the NCAA’s record book.” Given lost scholarships and other penalties, including a ban on appearing in postseason games, the team’s players would have been well within their rights to scatter to other schools—and indeed, recruiters quickly came calling. Instead, as Raymond chronicles, the team, urged on by linebacker Michael Mauti, pulled together to rebuild—had Mauti left, the author makes clear, it would have been game over. That rebuilding was tough work. As one player recalls, the first year involved “winter workouts, outside, twenty-degree weather, shorts and a T-shirt. Nothing’s gonna faze us.” The student body pulled together, too, coming out to cheer a workout as if it were a pennant game. Not so much the administration. As Raymond writes, “when the school’s administrators had quietly retreated from the heat of the Sandusky scandal, it was those student-athletes who stood tall, openly declaring their support for the institution and its record.” It’s those athletes whose voices resound in this well-crafted, multivocal homage.
Fans of Big Ten football will enjoy this tatters-to-touchdowns tale of gridiron redemption.
