Listen," says Penn State quarterback Christian Hackenberg, tossing his shaggy brown hair off his forehead, "I spent three years cutting my hair and shaving, which I still don't have to do." He rubs his hand across his chin, feeling for a beard he can't grow. "I'm free now." He runs his fingers through his feathery mane, does his best hair flip, and laughs. This is his form of rebellion.
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Some 275 miles away in Palmyra, Virginia, Erick Hackenberg rolls his eyes. Minutes before the November 9 kickoff between Penn State and Minnesota, Christian's dad is talking about how his oldest son really needs to cut his hair. I mean, look at that. You can see it peeking out the bottom of his helmet. What kind of look is that? And for crying out loud, can he stop patting the ball before he throws? It's messing up his rhythm. Erick is a former Division I quarterback, a backup to Shawn Moore at Virginia in the late 1980s, a fundamentals junkie and forever a coach. Nikki Hackenberg is Christian's mom, a former all-conference middle hitter at Lehigh, the type of athlete who understands the strain of playing college sports. Nikki can't sit still during the game. She fidgets around her kitchen, dumping chili contents1 into a Crock-Pot, desperate for a distraction.
This is the first game that neither Erick nor Nikki will attend since sending their son off to Penn State. With three other boys at home in the small central Virginia town, it has become impossible to make every sporting event for each child. Reinforcements were sent to Minneapolis in the form of a grandpa and an uncle. Erick and Nikki watch from home as Christian, a 6-foot-4 220-pounder, trots onto the field for the ninth time this season, a rosy-cheeked rookie who has become the face of a storied college football program trying to rehab its image following the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal.
In the wake of that horrific episode, which unfolded in the fall of 2011 and left Sandusky in jail, legendary and since-deceased coach Joe Paterno out of a job, and the university on the hook for $60 million in payouts to the victims, the NCAA handed down crippling sanctions. It was an unprecedented move; many horrors took place on Penn State's campus, but no NCAA violations were committed. Significant scholarship reductions, a four-year postseason ban, and instructions to vacate all wins from 1998 to 2011 scared away a handful of then–Penn State players and a couple recruits.
Hackenberg, a five-star prospect who could have gone anywhere, didn't bail. "There's still an aura around this program," says Hackenberg, who will play his final Beaver Stadium game of the season when Penn State hosts Nebraska on Saturday. "What they built, you can't take that away. Of course the initial reaction was, 'What is going to happen?' But I think when the guys decided to stick around, and when our class decided to stick around, I think that made a statement that we're not going to let it die."
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