Some Things Are More Important Than Winning

The Orange Bowl crowd let out a deafening roar. Penn State had just blocked a Kansas punt with a minute and 20 seconds left in the game.

That gave us the ball at mid-field and a slim chance to get back in the game which we were losing, 14-7.

Until then, it had looked as if our undefeated season of ten straight wins was going down the drain.

"You can do it!" our guys shouted at the offensive team as they surged onto the field. They believed it. But I had my doubts. Pepper Rogers, the University of Kansas coach, had done a great job with his team; if they could stop us for four more downs, the victory was theirs.

Then a 47-yard pass from Penn State quarterback Chuck Burkhart to Bobby Campbell put the ball on Kansas's three-yard line. Now the excitement really began to mount. Two plays later Burkhart ran around end for the touchdown. We now trailed, 14-13. With 15 seconds left, we had a big decision to make.

We could kick an almost sure extra point and earn a tie—we wouldn't win, but we wouldn't lose either. Or we could run a play from the three-yard line and try to win with a two-point conversion—we could win, but we could also lose if the play failed. It was win, lose or draw on this final play.

The stands were going wild and so, I guessed, were millions of fans watching on national television. But for me it was the game's easiest play to call.

"Let's go for two," I told Burkhart at the side line. Seconds later the teams were lined up. Now the possibilities for us were two—win or lose. The play we chose was a rollout pass into the end zone. It was our best chance and we had it well-rehearsed.

But Kansas had scouted us even better, and their defenders batted away a Burkhart-to-Kwalick pass. Incomplete. The game was over. We had lost, 14-13, but I was satisfied that we had made the right choice.

Then someone yelled, "Penalty!"

"Kansas had 12 men on the field," one of my assistants screamed over the roar. The referee put the ball down one and a half yards from the goal and we got a second try. This time Campbell swept end and we won, unbelievably, 15-14.

Two totally different results, in just a matter of moments, yet both were completely acceptable to me. For actually we had done the same thing both times—we had played to win and done our best.

And that was good enough for me. I'm a lot happier winning than I am losing. But to me winning is only the object of the game; it's not the whole game.

Winning is important. I don't like losing any better than anyone else. One time after a Penn State loss, my father-in-law, who is an architect, said to me, "Don't take it so hard, Joe. It's only a game."

"You're right," I answered. "But tell me, how would you feel if you designed a building and it fell down?"

Still, there are things that are more important than winning. What are they? Well, one is courage, not being afraid to lose. That's why I wanted the team to go for two points in the 1969 Orange Bowl—to win or lose with courage. Honesty and fair play are two more.

I'll never forget the time I learned about playing fair from Rip Engle, the coach I played under at Brown University and under whom I later served as an assistant coach at Penn State. Rip was another guy who didn't believe in the win-at-any-cost proposition.

In this case, we knew our Penn State team was in for a battle long before we took the field, and sure enough, our opponents took an early lead. Then midway through the second quarter one of our security men who walks the side lines with a walkie-talkie came up to me.

"Hey, Joe," he said, "listen to this."

I put my ear to the receiver and could hear someone calling plays. "Check off; change to thirteen trap instead," the voice instructed.

Out on the field I watched in disbelief. The quarterback stepped away from the center, switched signals and ran the play I'd heard on the walkie-talkie. The whole procedure was repeated on the next play.