Student of the Game : Penn State Quarterback Now Has Time to Prepare

This was not a coerced confession. Thursday morning, with the grace of, well, a dancer, Wally Richardson casually revealed one of the elective classes he’s looking forward to this fall:

Ballroom dancing. For fun. For real.

“It’s a beginning class,” said Penn State’s fifth-year senior quarterback, who is only one class short of his degree in liberal arts--he plans then to go to law school--but is loading his schedule with four classes.

“I just heard it was a pretty good class from one of my teammates last year, so I decided to get in it. Bobby Engram [the Nittany Lions’ star receiver now in the NFL] actually recommended it.”

Beginning to understand why Coach Joe Paterno wasn’t quite sure what to do with Richardson in his first year as a starter last season?

Richardson will begin another sort of dancing Sunday, when he leads his young offensive squad--and very young offensive line--against USC’s talented defense in the Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

But, after a year of trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to live up to the high standards set by Kerry Collins--and being unfairly spotlighted as the symbol of Penn State’s fall from Big Ten grace--Richardson begins this season established and far more confident, and actually with some time to devote to studying football.

After dominating the Big Ten under Collins--with the help of tailback Ki-Jana Carter and tight end Kyle Brady--the 1995 Nittany Lions lost their first two conference games against Wisconsin and Ohio State and dropped out of the Rose Bowl race. An unsteady Richardson bore the brunt of it.

Not until the end of the season--and academic term--when Richardson sparked a comeback victory over Michigan State and then threw four touchdown passes in a 43-14 Outback Bowl rout of Auburn, did Richardson emerge.

Engram, his favorite receiver, is gone, and there isn’t a Brady or a Carter around, but Richardson is clearly the leader and inspiration.

“This kid is finally starting to fall in love with football,” said receiver coach Ken Jackson, a former NFL wide receiver and Penn State star. “And I’m just waiting for him to explode.

“He has put so much time into his school--and his family has cared so much about that--he really hasn’t sat and watched and studied the game. He only has three credits left, so he can really give the position some justice, spend the time.

“He was the starting quarterback last year, but he’s staying up until 2 a.m. doing papers all week. It was hard for him to go back and forth--school, football, school.”

Jackson says that the month of practice time between the end of the regular season and the bowl game against Auburn was the perfect chance for Paterno and Richardson to finally get on the same page.

After being so dependent on Collins and Carter, Paterno didn’t have total confidence in Richardson, and Richardson, a 6-foot-4 drop-back passer with a lot of toughness, didn’t have total confidence in himself.

“Sometimes, when you play week to week, you don’t get a chance to understand really what kind of players you have,” Jackson said. “Remember, we have a 20-hour [a week] rule to practice and study the game--it isn’t like pro ball, when you can really see what a kid’s talent is.

“Wally had never really communicated with Joe before that, he was so busy. But when school was over, Wally had a chance to show what he could do. And Joe gave Wally a chance in the game.”

Heading into this season, Paterno has made it clear: “Quarterback is one area I am not worried about.”

The usually undemonstrative Richardson says he knows that players are looking to him for leadership this season, and that Sunday against the pressure USC defense will be a prime time for him to stand and deliver.

In a vast departure from last year, when there were older players around, Richardson says he occasionally has been barking at his teammates during practice just to make sure the team stays focused.

“I was always excited about this game,” Richardson said. “I knew it would be a big challenge for us, knowing we were losing a lot of people off our offense. It’s a challenge early to see what we’re made of.

“I don’t know how things are going to be early, whether we have to weather the storm or whatever, but I have to concentrate on making sure everybody is settled and doing what they should be doing to help us move the ball down the field.

“I have been around here for a while, and I can communicate to the younger guys that it has not always been a bed of roses for us the whole time here.”

Last year, Richardson completed 193 of 335 passes for 2,198 yards and 18 touchdowns--with only six interceptions--in a 9-3 season. Those statistics bettered in every category the numbers that Collins posted in 1993, his first starting season.

But Richardson struggled in losses to Wisconsin and Northwestern.

Said Jackson: “The team that he inherited last year already had their stars who had made their mark without him. It was kind of difficult for him to get the type of respect I think most quarterbacks deserve.

“He did some things nobody’s done here at Penn State, [but] wasn’t noticed, based on what Kerry had done. It was a situation where he got better as he went on, and now he is the man on offense.

“And remember, Kerry had some guys who really made his job very easy--Ki-Jana, Kyle Brady. Wally came in, all those things weren’t totally in place. Based on everything we went through last year, how the league kind of caught up to us, Wally did a good job.”

Jackson cautions that, without the first-round skill-position talent on this roster, Richardson may not put up huge numbers this season, especially early on, when the sophomores and juniors are still learning.

That doesn’t mean he won’t be better, though, Jackson said.

“It is his team--he might not throw for as many yards, not do so many things statistically, because really, on paper, we don’t have a great offensive team,” Jackson said. “We’re not even close to what we had a few years ago.

“But we’ll find out if this guy can keep the team together, can he keep the game close, and not make many mistakes. This team cannot afford mistakes, because it’s not like we’re going to score 40 or 50 points a game.

“There’s lot of responsibility on us as coaches. We can’t ask Wally to do miracles--he’s not a kid who’s going to go back and run all over the place and do all that fancy stuff.

“We’ve got to be patient. We have a good defense, and we have to let the offense develop gradually. We can’t say, ‘Wally, you have a great arm, show it off.’ And at the same time, Wally can’t throw it up there to an area and have Bobby Engram go up and get it. Those days are over.”

As an NFL prospect, Jackson compares Richardson favorably to most of the quarterbacks he played with, including Ron Jaworski and Matt Cavanaugh. And Richardson got a hefty endorsement from a close friend of Jackson’s, former Eagle quarterback Randall Cunningham.

“He came up and visited, saw Wally out throwing the ball around,” Jackson said. “Randall looked at him and said, ‘Man, this kid’s a pro.’ ”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

No. 7 USC vs. No. 11 PENN STATE

* Site: East Rutherford, N.J.

* Time: 11 a.m.

* TV: Channel 7

* Radio: KLSX-FM (97.1)