Penn State players look back, remember when they knew ‘why’

They all said it.

All the players old enough to remember, who spoke during the week leading up to Saturday’s Senior Day game against No. 14 Michigan — Christian Hackenberg, Matt Baney, Anthony Zettel, Trevor Williams — took a moment to remember the game that stood out most to them in their careers.

Incredibly, they all said the same thing. And they all remembered it from a different place on that turf in Beaver Stadium.

It was 2013. No. 18 Michigan was in town. Those who were there said the stadium shook as it filled to bursting with fans clad in white – snow-blind by their own shirts and screaming, screaming for almost five hours as the game unraveled like a spool of firecracker poppers into four overtimes.

For Hackenberg, of course, the game, still his “most memorable,” was a coming-of-age party of sorts. The then-freshman’s first true test of resilience; foreshadowing, maybe, what he’d go through his next two years.

“I think it was so draining and had so many ups and downs,” he said Tuesday, grinning and cupping his chin in his hand as he thought about that day. “We could have lost that game so many times, and we could have won that game so many times. It’s one of those things you look back at it, and how everything unfolded, it was insane. Next thing you look down, and it was like 5 1/2 hours (of playing football). It was really draining physically and mentally.”

For Zettel, it was life-altering – a part of the glue sealing the brotherhood that would, two years later, walk out with him onto the field for the last time. The brotherhood that got him through the death of his father this season.

“The four-overtime win against Michigan, that was the best one,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of great moments here, team wins that really change your life when you look back at it.”

Baney stood on the sideline that day, he said, a year removed from ineligibility after transferring from St. Francis, where he was a starter as a true freshman.

His dad thought he was crazy to choose the life of a walk-on at Penn State over certain big-man status at the smaller Division I school.

He didn’t care. He just wanted to be a part of it, somehow.

“I would say my favorite moment was probably the Michigan game during coach O’Brien’s last year,” he said Tuesday. “It was an incredible season. We had a lot of games that went like that, but watching us come back, the sideline never had a doubt that we were going to win that game.

“Everyone was behind each other 100 percent. That was a special time for me and for the rest of my teammates.”

And for Williams, it was affirmation. Because he came to Penn State for a reason.

And that reason, he said, was to play in big-time football games.

And that reason for him and many others was shaken to its core when the sanctions hit and the team was crippled and there was no certainty of anyone’s future once they stepped off that field.

On it, though, they could control what happened to them.

“When I got here, I didn’t expect the sanctions to take place,” said Williams. “I expected to play for a championship my first year…Coming out with that victory, that’s the reason I came to Penn State. To play in a historic game like that; a physical game.

“I wanted to play big-time football…I was fortunate enough to be a part of something special with a great group of guys. I’ll remember that forever.”

These seniors, plus 16 more, will be honored on Saturday.

And the quarterback, thrown into a surrogate-senior role to lead the team those years ago, will step out on the field on Saturday after the ceremonies to join his brothers, and they’ll stare at those maize-and-blue helmets.

And they all might stand there a moment, and remember the reasons they stayed, the reasons they persevered, and the reasons they’re proud of that.

This story was originally published November 20, 2015 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Penn State players look back, remember when they knew ‘why’."