There is adversity to be found on the football field, which might explain why a disproportionate number of kids from Rust Belt cities find their way into big-time college football programs, where the hits you sustain on the field must seem like nothing when compared with the hits everyday living can dish out.
Penn State sophomore tailback Brandon Beachum, not surprisingly, is a rugged inside runner who prefers to bowl over would-be tacklers than to step around them. The best way to confront a problem is to confront it head-on, right? And what better way to do that than with those whose lunch-pail perspectives have been symbolically forged in the furnaces of a cherished but bygone heyday?
"We had six guys on my high school team my senior year go to big-time schools," Beachum said. "Me and Michael Zordich [son of Penn State alum and former Eagles safety Mike Zordich] came here. We had a quarterback go to Notre Dame, a linebacker go to Michigan, a cornerback to go Nebraska. It was pretty unbelievable."
Beachum, who through attrition has risen to the primary backup position behind starting tailback Evan Royster, is one of three players on the Penn State roster from Youngstown. His dream - well, one of them - is for all three to line up in the same backfield for the Nittany Lions, if only for a single play. It would be another small signal to world that while you might knock Youngstown down, its sons will rise, dust themselves off and keep moving forward.
Maybe such an opportunity will arise on Saturday, when No. 12 Penn State (7-1, 3-1 Big Ten) visits Northwestern (5-3, 2-2) in a potential "trap" game for the Nits, falling as it does between last week's romp at Michigan and next week's much-anticipated hosting of No. 17 Ohio State in Beaver Stadium.
