Men in White

Book excerpt: A thrilling sports story, Men in White is the tale of the young athletes who defied the doomsayers and rescued Penn State’s football program from the horrors of the Jerry Sandusky scandal—told by the players themselves. On November 5, 2011, the news that Jerry Sandusky had been charged with forty counts of child molestation rocked Penn State’s leafy campus, unseating the university president, the athletic director, and head coach Joe Paterno—devastating the football program he had erected and diligently maintained over half a century. Men in White recounts the saga of the student athletes who elected to stay and rebuild the program in the face of crippling NCAA sanctions, blistering heat from the outraged media, and radio silence from the adults in the school’s administration. With the once proud program in free fall and their personal fortunes in peril, these young men refused to back down, toiling for five long seasons to rehabilitate the program and its ideals, culminating in the stirring come-from-behind defeat of Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game. Their story echoes that of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, a cast of young men—colossal underdogs—who boldly accepted the challenge of a lifetime, achieving success while shouldering the weight of a bruising political drama.