He will drive to Beaver Stadium on Saturday in a minivan with Pennsylvania license plates that read: YANKS-PSU.
Jim Cantafio always wanted the world to know about his twin loyalties–to the Yankees and Penn State.
But his favorite school no longer acknowledges him. The coaches he knew on a first-name basis no longer call. And he wouldn’t dream of asking for tickets.
He won’t need any help to land a prime seat for Saturday night’s Michigan-Penn State game. Wolverines quarterback Chad Henne, whom Cantafio coached at Wilson High School, will take care of him.
“It will be a tough game because we’re Penn State people here,” Cantafio said. “But I bleed maize and blue now.”
It all changed after Henne, who grew up 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia in Wyomissing, Pa., snubbed the Nittany Lions. His decision stung coach Joe Paterno, who also had seen top-level in-state quarterbacks such as Dan Kendra (Florida State) and Jeff Smoker (Michigan State) go elsewhere.
Henne, who grew up going to Penn State games, blossomed into the nation’s No. 3 quarterback recruit.
During one campus visit, Paterno put his arm around Henne, said he wanted to win one more national championship and told him he was the quarterback who could take him there.
Henne, then 17, was flattered and indicated he would sign with the Nittany Lions. Paterno reportedly told friends he viewed Henne as a lock.
Then, a few weeks before his senior season, Henne chose Michigan, pointing to the school’s history of developing NFL quarterbacks (Elvis Grbac, Brian Griese, Tom Brady) and his confidence in Wolverines quarterbacks coach Scot Loeffler.
But somehow Cantafio took the hit. It didn’t make any sense.
Didn’t they know the 53-year-old Pennsylvania high school Hall of Fame coach loved Penn State and over the years had sent five of his best football players there? Or that when Cantafio had Paterno over for dinner in 1995, the venerable coach had posed for a group picture that still hangs in Cantafio’s living room?
None of that seemed to matter.
“It got ugly,” Cantafio recalled, “and there are some hard feelings because of it.”
Those feelings are evident more than three years later.
“I was very disappointed because Chad told me he was going to come to Penn State in the spring,” Paterno said Tuesday. “He talked to me on the phone.”
Did Paterno consider that an oral commitment?
“What difference does it make?” Paterno replied. “We were disappointed we didn’t get Chad because he’s a great kid, good student, the whole bit. But he had to do what was best for him and it looks like it was the best thing for him. And we are in the people business. If it worked for him, I have no problems with that.”
It worked out for everyone. For the most part.
Henne guided Michigan to a Rose Bowl berth as a freshman. He struggled last year after injuries to tackle Jake Long and tailback Mike Hart killed Michigan’s running game and forced him to beat teams with his arm.
Now the Wolverines lead the Big Ten with 195.7 rushing yards per game and Henne ranks 15th nationally in passing efficiency. The 6-foot-2-inch, 223-pound junior has completed 62.0 percent of his throws while throwing 13 touchdown passes and four interceptions.
“Chad has a total grasp on the game now,” Cantafio said. “When I talk to him, he says: `Coach, I can look off the safeties with my eyes and then go opposite on the deep ball.'”
Without Henne, Penn State removed the slashes from quarterback/receiver/running back/return man Michael Robinson. And Robinson led the Nittany Lions renaissance last year, earning The Tribune’s Silver Football as the league MVP after he guided Penn State to an 11-1 record and Orange Bowl victory.
After Henne’s decision, Penn State coaches convinced highly touted Pittsburgh native Anthony Morelli to forsake his oral commitment to the Panthers. Morelli has been up and down (56 percent completion rate, six touchdowns, five interceptions) in his first season starting under center.
Morelli will try to prove Saturday he should have been Penn State’s top target all along.
Henne will try to show his home-state fans just how right he was to choose Michigan, which is 6-0 and ranked No. 4. It will be Henne’s only college game in Pennsylvania.
“You don’t want to go home and hear, `Oh, [you] should have gone to Penn State’ and all that stuff,” he said. “You just want to win so bad.”
The same will apply for the Penn State staff, especially QB coach Jay Paterno, the head coach’s son.
“I just felt a lot more comfortable here with Scot Loeffler developing me as a quarterback than Jay Paterno,” Henne said this week.
Cantafio, meanwhile, no longer coaches at Wilson. He resigned in August, saying he wanted to focus on his football camp.
A major benefit of that decision is that he gets to attend nearly all of Henne’s games. He will be in a Michigan section Saturday, rooting for a player he considers a son.
Then he will he retreat to his Ford Windstar, the one with the YANKS-PSU plates.
“I didn’t want to go through the hassle of changing them,” he said. So he did the next best thing: His license plate frame reads “Michigan football.”
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tgreenstein@tribune.com
