The Lion in Autumn
A Season with Joe Paterno and Penn State Football
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
"Fascinating. . . . One of the best books ever written on the rise and fall of a great college football coach."
—Allen Barra, San Francisco Chronicle
The Lion in Autumn takes readers inside Penn State’s storied football program as legendary coach Joe Paterno fights to turn his struggling team into a winner once again. In more than a half century at Penn State, Paterno has won more bowl games (21) than any other coach and more games (354) than all but one, en route to two national championships and five perfect seasons. But in the new millennium hard times arrived in Happy Valley. His Nittany Lions had losing seasons in four of five years, dropping sixteen of twenty-three games in 2003 and 2004. There were boos at Beaver Stadium and increasing calls for the aging Paterno to step down.
Award-winning sportswriter Frank Fitzpatrick followed JoePa through the 2004 season as the beloved coach struggled to save himself and his storied program. Fitzpatrick trailed Paterno from fund-raisers to the spring practices to the sidelines, detailing how the coach endured another losing season while building a team that would win the Orange Bowl and compete for the national championship in 2005. Interweaving stories from past seasons into the narrative, Fitzpatrick fleshes out the legend of Paterno.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While the title of this book may be overstated, its subtitle is certainly understated: veteran sports writer Fitzpatrick's account is more a biography of Paterno-and thus a biography of Penn State football as it is known today-related through the ups and downs of the 2004 season, the team's fourth consecutive losing season. Chapters effortlessly breeze from anecdotes from Paterno's boyhood to the Nittany Lions glory days of the 1980s to the action on the field in 2004, united by a central problem facing Paterno and the Penn State community: what do you do when a legend falters? Now in his eighties and after a long stretch of winning seasons earned by a unique combination of gridiron savvy and personal, educational and spiritual guidance (an Ivy League graduate, Paterno is known to recite Shakespeare at pep rallies), "JoePa" hadn't mustered a winning season-much less a strong bowl berth or championship-in four years, and several star players had been involved in behavior scandals. Could the school and the rabid alumni community continue to support Paterno now that the bar was set so high? Fitzpatrick doesn't portend to answer these questions, but readers will find hints of optimism in his portrait of Paterno and the inner workings of college football.
