Jourdan Rodrigue column: Remembering Rusty Hochberg, the Little Lion who became a Knight

There was a time when a Lion from State College quarterbacked the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

Eric “Rusty” Hochberg was the lanky, wiry quarterback from State High who helped paint Beaver Stadium one summer, and then chose to play football at Rutgers the next.

“I painted the steps gray,” Hochberg told The New York Times in 1984, “while I daydreamed about being down there on the field.”

Not quite that particular field, however.

Hochberg’s high school coach, Ron Pavlechko, laughs at the reasoning, suggested by Hochberg himself way back in the 1980s, behind not wanting to play at or attend Penn State — that it was always “Penn State this, Penn State that,” and he wanted to get away from home.

“It may have been (the reason),” chuckled Pavlechko. “He was the third brother ... growing up in this town, I think there are those individuals who want to go someplace else, and then there are those who just think Penn State is the only place to go.

“Rusty was in the former category.”

Hochberg went on to set a school record for single-game passing yards in just his third start, on Oct. 1, 1983. He completed 19 passes on 34 attempts for 367 yards, and briefly, Rutgers led the behemoth Nittany Lions, who were coming off an 11-win season and Sugar Bowl victory.

After a record-long 76-yard completion, Hochberg was hit hard by Penn State’s Greg Gattuso, and went down. He tore his anterior and posterior ligaments and was out the rest of the season. He got five staples in his knee during surgery. The yardage record stood for five years.

Rusty’s dad, Jim Hochberg, was Penn State’s director of sports medicine at the time. He was also the first to reach his son, dressed in enemy colors and lying on the field.

“What’s up?” asked Jim, standing over him, according to The New York Times’ recount of the events.

“My knee’s broke,” responded Rusty, matter-of-factly.

“He had a sense of grit about him,” said Pavlechko, whose 1981 State College Little Lions team went undefeated while quarterbacked by Hochberg, who was a perfect fit for the team’s wing T and option offenses. Pavlechko said he can still see Hochberg eating up the field with his long strides.

“Regardless of how things were happening,” said Pavlechko, “whether good or bad, he always just kind of had his nose to the grindstone and just competed.”

And he had a blast, too.

Pavlechko said he was “unique,” and that as a quarterback, it was “hard to put him into a category.” One big characteristic stood out to those who played with or coached Hochberg: his quiet, determined sense of positivity.

“He always was in the affirmative,” he said. “He always exuded that (sense of), ‘Yeah, we’re gonna do it,’ no matter the situation.

“There was never a wavering. He had kind of a positive laser focus ... He wasn’t vocal, but by his body language, he was always tall, strong, never dropped his head, always stood tall.”

After his injury, Hochberg’s comeback 1984 season earned Rutgers a 7-3 record and the quarterback a “Most Courageous Athlete of the Year” award from New Jersey sports writers.

Talk about never dropping his head.

In July, Hochberg passed away while hiking in Arizona, where he and his family (his wife, and three sons in their 20s) had resided for some time.

“Anytime someone young like that passes away, it’s hard to take,” Pavlechko said, quietly.

“Anytime I remember him, I see this wry smile on his face that sort of exemplified the fun he had with what he was doing. And that grit that he seemed to have, that he just wasn’t going to be beaten.”

Hochberg did it right. He played football while he could, where he wanted, and gave it everything he had. And he had some fun while he was at it.

Rutgers is in town on Saturday to face Penn State at night under the lights of Beaver Stadium.

So, before the fierce competitiveness of college football takes over that evening, maybe pour one out, for football and for playing hard, and for a grinning kid who stood tall, head up, with a foot in both fields — and don’t worry about whether you’re wearing blue and white, or red, while you do it.

This story was originally published September 18, 2015 at 3:22 PM with the headline "Jourdan Rodrigue column: Remembering Rusty Hochberg, the Little Lion who became a Knight ."