EAST LANSING, Mich. -- It is entirely fitting that the big play propelling the Penn State football team to its first Big Ten Championship since 1994 was made by a relative unknown like Donnie Johnson.
In fact, no one should have been surprised when Johnson knifed through the Michigan State line and blocked a punt off the foot of the Spartans' Brandon Fields, permanently swinging the momentum in the title-clinching game.
That's just the kind of fall this has been.
This has been a year of surprises for the Nittany Lions.
Penn State's leading receiver, Deon Butler, is a former walk-on who received very little hype entering the season. Its best special teams player is another walk-on, kamikaze Ethan Kilmer.
But the real story of this season is one of redemption, not only for the program, but for a generation of players trying desperately to keep from going down as one of the worst in Penn State's proud history.
And Donnie Johnson knows something about redemption.
"All the hard work finally paid off," Johnson said after the game. "Four years, all the up and downs, it finally paid off. It finally paid off in today's game."
Johnson could have easily been talking about that generation, but in actuality he was talking about his own career at Penn State, one that came to a head with an excellent performance on the biggest of stages.
"Man, I been at the bottom of the depth chart, the scout team, to almost off the team. I been through a lot up here," Johnson said. "After the season we had last year, to win the Big Ten, man, this is unbelievable. There is no way I can describe it right now."
Johnson made two of the biggest plays on an afternoon chock full of them, deflating the Spartans with a second-quarter interception in the end zone to go with his blocked punt.
The block was the first of any kind that the Lions recorded this fall, and in fact was the first by Penn State since last fall when Johnson blocked Fields in State College.
"It was the same dude I blocked it on, so go figure," Johnson said. "They should have been ready for it."
The Spartans weren't, and Johnson's block jump and Matt Hahn's subsequent recovery for a touchdown jump-started a Penn State team, which had been looking tight while holding just a 3-0 lead.
"They had a wall protection. We rushed three on that side, and they only had two to block us," Johnson said. "The guy who was supposed to block me went out on Ethan [Kilmer], and I just shot the gap and got the block."
The ball bounced into the Michigan State end zone where the opportunistic Hahn fell on it for the score that would give Penn State the 10-point lead it would never relinquish.
Johnson's interception was nearly as huge, coming with three seconds left in the first half and sending Penn State to the locker room with a 17-0 lead that it needed to defend for 30 minutes to guarantee itself a BCS bid.
With 11 seconds left on the clock, Michigan State quarterback Drew Stanton rolled to the right, and then went back to the left under pressure, throwing to the front left corner of the end zone.
"The receiver ran a hitch, and I guess the quarterback tried to scramble, the receiver turned it up, and I went with him," Johnson said. "The quarterback threw it and I was there -- right place at the right time."
Overall it was a sweet afternoon of redemption for both Johnson and his team, which coincidentally both hit rock bottom during the 2003 season.
"The low point was my sophomore year when I was having trouble in class, and I went from No. 1 running back to scout team running back within like a week," Johnson said. "That was the lowest point in my career ever. But I worked my way back up."
Funny, so did Penn State.
