The following story appears in our Class of 2021 recruiting issue of Blue White Illustrated, which recently printed and is currently being mailed to subscribers.
Selecting the best offensive line class ever recruited by Penn State is relatively easy. The year was 1991. Three years later, four of those players were starters on the undefeated 1994 team that was one of the greatest offensive machines in college football history. Two years after that historic season, all four were NFL Draft choices: guard Jeff Hartings and tackle Andre Johnson in the first round, and tackle Keith Conlin and guard Marco Rivera in the sixth.
When they were recruited, no one on the Penn State staff or any of the few professional recruiting gurus of the time could have predicted what was ahead for the four players. John Bove was in his sixth and last year as coach Joe Paterno’s recruiting coordinator, and he has vivid memories of how it happened.
“Our whole staff would sit around and go over the depth chart and say we need this many linemen and we need a tight end,” said Bove, now retired after more than three decades at Penn State and living in his hometown of Wilmington, Del. “You always had to offer more players than you needed. If we needed 25 players, we’d offer 50. We would always get 50 percent of the players we offered. We were lucky, because that was our success rate as long as I was there. You had to be careful, because if you over-offered you would get too many accepting and then you would have to talk someone out of a scholarship. They resolved that later with what they called ‘grayshirting’ by having a couple recruits wait until the following January to enroll.”
Dick Anderson coached Penn State’s offensive line for many of his 35 years on the staff. “It’s extremely difficult for a freshman to come in and play,” Anderson said. “It’s tough for any freshman anywhere to play regardless of their talent. Some do, and some have to play out of need, injuries or maybe a depth problem. It becomes even more difficult for an offensive lineman, which may be the most difficult position to handle mentally. Then you have the transfer of physical abilities into that position. Even though they may have some physical potential beyond the guys that are playing, it’s generally realistic not to play them.”
Anderson said Hartings was a superior talent but definitely needed the time to develop into the All-American he became. “Jeff Hartings was really an undersized lineman when he came to us,” Anderson said, “but he had all the attributes of being a good player. It was a matter of him trying to fill out and get bigger so that he could compete at a very high level. He did that gradually from freshman to senior and kept getting stronger.”
As media guides indicated, Hartings was a 6-foot-3, 242-pound redshirt freshman, and his weight increased each year: 270 in ’93, 275 in ’94 and 284 in ’95.
Bove doesn’t recall precisely how many linemen were recruited in 1991, but each of member of the foursome that signed brought something different to the team.
Conlin was the easiest to recruit because his older brother Bucky was a first-team All-America tackle on Penn State’s 1986 national championship team. The family, which included Keith, Bucky and their five siblings, lived in the Philadelphia suburb of Glenside, Pa. Keith was an All-State lineman and a Big 33 selection who was recruited to play defense or offense. The Philadelphia area was part of Anderson’s recruiting territory. “Conlin was a big, tall guy, and in high school he was primarily a defensive player,” said Anderson, who in 1991 was the quarterbacks coach and oversaw the passing game. The weight training worked for Conlin, as he went from 265 pounds in high school to 300 pounds in his junior and senior seasons at Penn State.
Johnson and Rivera were New York natives. Johnson was a high school All-American as a two-way tackle from Southampton on the eastern tip of Long Island. Penn State saw him as a future defensive lineman, according to the Lions’ media guides. Rivera also lived on Long Island, but about 80 miles west and close to Queens, N.Y. He was an All-State offensive guard and defensive tackle in high school. Although he was credited with 300 tackles, 16 sacks and six interceptions, Penn State penciled him in on offense at guard or tackle.
Bove remembers Hartings being a priority target. He was from the small, rural Ohio town of St. Henry, nearly 65 miles northwest of Dayton and some 12 miles or so from the Indiana border. He also was from a large family, with four brothers and five sisters. St. Henry High School was so small there were only 49 students in Hartings’ senior class, but the football team was a powerhouse. St. Henry High won the 1990 state championship in its division, with the All-State Hartings serving as its best blocker on offense and also as a standout defensive tackle with more than 200 career stops and 23 sacks. Penn State’s staff envisioned him as an offensive guard and a potential team leader.
Ohio was the recruiting territory of Bill Kenney, the Lions’ offensive line coach at the time, but Bove became deeply involved. “St. Henry also had a quarterback we were after,” Bove said. “I can’t remember his name, but he didn’t give us a smell. Hartings was a heck of a player and a pretty smart kid, too. I was a little more active on the phone and stuff with the Ohio kids going back to [future All-Americans] O.J. McDuffie and Ki-Jana Carter. I was more familiar with the schools and players in Ohio, overall.”
Johnson and Rivera were recruited by Joe Sarra, who may have been the team’s most assertive recruiter despite his soft-spoken personality. New York was Sarra’s assigned recruiting area even though he was then coaching inside linebackers, where his star pupil had been future Hall of Famer Shane Conlan.
“Joe Sarra wasn’t going to miss anybody in his area,” Bove said. “Conlin was a family thing, and McDuffie and Carter were from Ohio, like Hartings. So we hit the lottery with those four guys.”
After the 1990 season when three of the four starters on his offensive line graduated, Paterno thought about using one or two of the incoming freshmen as reserves in 1991. But he had a hunch it would be best for the future of the football program to redshirt all four and let them develop. Anderson said Paterno’s instincts about the capability of his players were uncanny.
“Joe had a great eye in terms of believing this guy was going to be a good player but not at this position, at another position,” Anderson said. “Over the years, we made a lot of that kind of switch – offense to defense, defense to offense. A lot had to do with our needs, where we needed players or the potential of where these guys were going to go.”
Reflecting back, Anderson cited Mike Munchak as the foremost example of Paterno’s mindset. Munchak had been recruited out of Scranton in the late 1970s to play defensive end. After seeing him in practice, Paterno told Anderson that he wanted to switch Munchak to offense. “Mike said, ‘No way. I don’t like it and I’m not big enough,’” Anderson recalled. “Joe talked to him, and I explained how he would add weight and get stronger. He went on offense and became one of the best guards in the country.”
Munchak is now Penn State’s only offensive lineman in the Pro Football Hall of Fame after an 11-year career with the Houston Oilers. He has been coaching since the end of his playing years and is regarded by many people in pro football as the top offensive line coach in the NFL, having just ended his second season with Denver after many years in Tennessee and Pittsburgh.
So, when the 1991 recruits arrived on campus, Paterno placed all four freshmen on the foreign team that scrimmaged against the varsity using the plays of the upcoming opponent. Hartings, Rivera and Conlin were on the offensive line and Johnson on the defensive side, but injuries sent Hartings and Conlin to the sideline. Conlin said it was fortuitous for both of them. Conlin had suffered a shoulder separation in high school and it needed to be repaired.
“Jeff tore his knee up in practice and he actually went through surgery before me,” remembered Conlin, now a businessman in State College. “We had an assistant strength coach, Mike Wolfe, who had played on the ’86 team. He took me and Jeff into the weight room every day instead of going to practice, and we picked up a considerable amount of strength that first year.”
Conlin played enough at tackle and guard as a redshirt freshman on Penn State’s 1992 team to earn a letter, and so did Rivera at the right tackle position. An injury at midseason caused Johnson to miss earning a letter that season, while Hartings became a key reserve at left guard, averaging 34 plays per game. In 1993, Hartings and Rivera, now a left tackle, were starters, with Conlin serving as a backup at left guard and Johnson as a reserve at right tackle after moving from the defense during spring practice.
The 1993 season was a milestone, Penn State’s first year in the Big Ten Conference after more than century as an independent. It also turned out to be the springboard to the great 1994 season, despite a controversial midseason loss at Beaver Stadium in Penn State’s first-ever game against Michigan. Nittany Lion fans still cannot believe what happened in the opening moments of that game when the referee threatened to penalize Penn State if the hepped-up record crowd of 96,719 didn’t quiet down when Michigan was on offense. In the end, the Lions lost, 21-13, with the turning point coming on a series of four plays in the second half at the Michigan 1-yard line when the offense could not score on two quarterback sneaks by Kerry Collins and two runs up the middle by Carter. Hartings, Rivera and other players who were on the field during that ignominious sequence vowed it would never happen again.
With Collins, Carter, wide receiver Bobby Engram and tight end Kyle Brady spearheading the offense, the Nittany Lions finished 10-2, including a come-from-behind 31-13 win over then-No. 6 Tennessee in the Citrus Bowl, a victory that moved them up to eighth in the final Associated Press poll. Hartings missed the Maryland game because of an injury, giving Conlin the opportunity to make his only start that season. A shoulder injury that forced Rivera to miss the last three games paved the way for Johnson to start those games at right tackle.
Centers E.J. Sandusky in 1992 and Bucky Greeley in 1993 were crucial to the development of the four 1991 recruits, said Anderson. Greeley was a redshirt junior from Wilkes-Barre in ’93 who became the starter after getting plenty of experience for two years as a backup guard and center. In ’93, Greeley joined starting right guard Mike Malinoski in buying lunch for the offensive linemen at the local VFW every Thursday before a game. Those lunches helped build the camaraderie and teamwork of the offensive line and continued in earnest in 1994 after Malinoski had graduated when Greeley was a co-captain.
“Bucky was great,” Conlin said. “To this day, I still call him captain. He was a great leader and he kept us all in line. He was like the liaison between us and the coaches and Joe. He’s such a cynical, funny, funny dude. He had a way with handling everything. It’s a pretty well-known story that in preseason camp of ’94 we realized how good of an offense we were because the offense was beating up on the defense. [Joe] had to fudge some things to make the defense not feel so [bad] about themselves, like saying ‘you were offside’ or ‘that was a hold.’ He was getting us mad, and Bucky said, ‘Relax. Chill out. He’s stacking the deck. We’re good.’ And we realized he was right.”
The 1994 team went on to set NCAA records for total offense (520.2 yards per game) and points (47.8 per game). Over those final two seasons, Hartings, Rivera and Johnson started all 24 games. Conlin missed two starts in early October of 1995 against Ohio State and Purdue after injuring a knee during the Wisconsin game Sept. 30.
After the 1995 season, Rivera, Johnson and Conlin were among the more than 100 elite collegiate players, including 20 offensive linemen and 10 Penn State players, who participated in the Senior Bowl. Hartings was invited, Conlin said, but did not need to play in the game because he already knew he was going to be a high draft choice. Hartings achieved something in academics that was more significant than playing in the Senior Bowl. He was a first-team Academic All-American in 1994 and ’95, and after his senior year he received the College Football Hall of Fame’s prestigious $18,000 postgraduate scholarship, becoming one of only 18 Penn State players honored with the award from 1971 through 2020.
In the 1996 NFL Draft, Hartings was the 23rd overall player taken, picked by the Detroit Lions as a center. Johnson became the 30th overall selection when he was chosen by Washington. Four other Penn State players – Engram, linebacker Terry Killens and fullbacks Jon Witman and Brian Milne – were drafted before Conlin, who went in the sixth round to Indianapolis as the 191st overall choice. Tailback Stephen Pitts followed seven slots later, before Green Bay grabbed Rivera, making him the 208th overall selection. Tailback Mike Archie was the last Nittany Lion draft choice that year, going to Houston in the seventh round as 218th player selected.
Hartings went on to enjoy a very good career, playing five seasons with Detroit and six with Pittsburgh. He missed only two starts in 162 games and made two Pro Bowls with the Steelers. Johnson struggled at the pro level and was out of football after 1998. Indianapolis took a chance on Conlin even though he had been dealing with recurring neck problems since college, but “another episode” in the preseason ended his NFL aspirations. Rivera was the overachiever. After spending his first season as a reserve, he started almost every game for the Packers from 1998 through 2004 and for Dallas during the 2005 and ’06 seasons, earning three Pro Bowl invitations during his time in Green Bay.
Bove and Anderson believe the only other group of offensive linemen playing together that compares to the 1991 recruiting quartet is the trio that helped lead the way to Penn State’s success in the late 1970s and early ’80s: Munchak, Sean Farrell and Jim Romano. A major difference was that Romano was recruited one year before Farrell and Munchak and earned a letter at guard as a true freshman in 1977. Their development also was different, but it all jelled in 1981, with guards Farrell and Munchak and center Romano anchoring the front line of the team that finished with a 10-2 record and was third in final polls. Many Penn State people such as Bove feel this may have been a better overall Penn State team than the one the following season that won the program’s first national championship.
“Tight end Vyto Kab was part of that, too, and he was a heck of a good player,” Bove recalled.
Anderson remembered a string of outstanding offensive linemen in that era, stretching back to another two-time All-American in 1977 and ’78, tackle Keith Dorney, who is now in the College Football Hall of Fame. At the time, Farrell and Munchak were being called the best pair of guards in the nation. “They were that good,” Anderson said, “and Romano was very good when he got his chance.”
Farrell was the superstar, a first-team All-American as a junior and a consensus All-American as a senior. He and Romano were from Long Island, N.Y., and Kab was from nearby Wayne in northern New Jersey. In the 1982 draft, Munchak was the eighth overall player taken, by Houston, with Farrell going to Tampa Bay as the 17th pick and Kab to Philadelphia as the 78th. Neither Farrell or Kab came close to matching Munchak’s Hall of Fame career, although Farrell played 11 solid years, primarily with Tampa Bay and Denver, while Kab played in 59 games over six years, mostly with the Eagles.
Which takes us back to the 1991 recruiting class. While Munchak and Dorney might be the most celebrated linemen that Penn State has ever produced, Hartings and Rivera enjoyed great success at the pro level, and the ’91 signees remain the best group of offensive line recruits in Penn State’s history.
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