The Lion In Autumn A Season with Joe Paterno and Penn State Football Hardback - 2005

by Fitzpatrick, Frank

A legendary coach, a struggling team, and a storm of controversy: An award-winning sportswriter takes you inside a tumultuous season of Penn State football, in the bestselling tradition of A Season on the Brink.

In his fifty years of coaching football at Penn State, Joe Paterno has become one of the most popular figures in American sports. Only one other coach has won more football games than Paterno; his team has won more bowl games than any other; and he does it all the way it was meant to be done, with his players succeeding in the classroom as well as on the field and in the pro ranks. Along the way, Paterno has transformed a once obscure agricultural college into a huge research university in the Big Ten, whose endowment now exceeds $1 billion, tens of millions of which 'JoePa' has personally helped to raise. But lately the tide seems to have turned in Happy Valley. Since 2000, Paterno's Nittany Lions have lost more games than they've won, and accusations of off-the-field crimes have tarnished his program's reputation.

Award-winning sports reporter Frank Fitzgerald followed Joe Paterno and his Nittany Lions through the 2004 season, from fundraisers in State College to the sidelines at Beaver Stadium. The Lion in Autumn delivers the complete story of this frustrating, tormenting, and ultimately exhilarating turning-point season and the history that led up to it. This is the chronicle of fifty phenomenal years including the dynasties of undefeated and national championship teams that came before and a riveting fight to reclaim a legacy.

'In an era of college football in which it seems everybody's hand is in the till or balled up in a fist, Paterno sticks out like a clean thumb.'
Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated