Penn State football got off its team busses Saturday night in Iowa City wearing new t-shirts.
The T-Shirts said one word “IF.”
Some were wondering what exactly “if” meant, and interim coach Terry Smith explained it after the game.
WHAT IT MEANS
“It’s a belief,” Smith said. “It’s infinite possibilities. If we focus, if we play harder, if we buy into each other, it means a lot of different things. And it gave us limitless possibilities of the outcome.”
“We did some really, really good things tonight. The big thing we have to learn is finish. That has been a problem right now. We have to learn to play four full quarters and finish at the end.”
THE JOE PA CONNECTION
08 October 2011: Penn State Nittany Lions head coach Joe Paterno answers questions from the media following a game against the Iowa Hawkeyes at Beaver Stadium in University Park, PA. The Penn State Nittany Lions would defeat the Iowa Hawkeyes 13-3.
“If” was legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno’s favorite poem.
Former Penn State DC Tom Bradley told the story to ESPN in 2014.
Here’s an excerpt.
“I want you to read this,” Paterno said. “He had given Bradley a copy of “If,” the four-stanza poem Rudyard Kipling wrote for his son in 1909.
“Coach, I know the poem,” Bradley said.
“But have you read the poem?” Paterno asked. “Do you understand it? I want you to read it.”
This is what Bradley read.
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”
