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This year Good was portrayed by Penn State, coached by Joe Paterno, 59, who might rightfully call himself Joe Paternal and is actually nicknamed Joe Pa. His Nittany Lions, who won the national championship in 1982, have long been counted among the purest football players in the land. In the plainest uniforms, down to the bare calves and black shoes, they even dress the part. Quoting a predecessor, Junior Quarterback John Shaffer recalls, "Chuck Fusina once said that if Coach Paterno could get away with it, he'd remove the numbers from the jerseys." Before marching unbeaten into Miami...
Though Switzer must have out-coached Joe Pa, if only in the area of sideline composure, Oklahoma's good-times coach was as graceful and considerate later as Shaffer. "In the '50s, coaches may have made the difference," he said, "but you don't outcoach anymore. Players win now." With a sigh not a bellow, Switzer proclaimed, "We survived Bowl Day. That gives us the national championship." As for next year, he advised pretenders, "You've got to be good, got to be lucky and got to have other people help you." Oklahoma's aid came from New Orleans, where...
...coach, he is hard on the furniture. "When the players walked in the first day," recalls Payton, "Mike was standing there with his arms folded. He nodded to [Assistant] Ted Plumb, who started calling roll. I thought, 'We're in the Army now.' "Ditka, 46, is from Aliquippa, Pa., and his people are from the Ukraine, Nagurski stock. A Canadian who has lived most of his rich life just across a frozen lake in Minnesota, Bronko, 77, once claimed to have no personal knowledge of summer. That's the Bear toughness. "Some teams are named Smith," Ditka says. "Some...
...after his playing career ended within a year. "I'd hoped to coach," says Sample, 48, "but the only letter I could bring myself to write wasn't answered." In 1972 a federal court convicted him of check fraud, and he served 366 days in prison. At Allen-wood, Pa., "not a jail, a summer camp," Sample realized how much he "needed to be connected somehow" with sports. "I never played tennis before I retired, but I played there every day." Now Sample is a tennis linesman at tournaments like the U.S. Open and last week's Masters...
DIED. James H. ("Sleepy Jim") Crowley, 83, last of the great "Four Horsemen" backfield that led Notre Dame to a 19-1 record in the 1923-24 seasons; in Scranton, Pa. The small (160 lbs.), swift Crowley was immortalized with his teammates by Sportswriter Grantland Rice: "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden...