On November 17, 1990, when the top-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish fell to the Nittany Lions in South Bend, Ind., the south goalpost in Beaver Stadium toppled too.

Sue Paterno had just finished watching husband Joe Paterno and the No. 18 Penn State football team pull off its dramatic, last second win. Hanging out in her basement about an hour after Craig Fayak's game-winning field goal sealed the 24-21 win for Penn State, she heard a noise outside.

She decided to check it out. When she opened the door, a mob of students greeted her, shouting "SuePa! SuePa! ... Speech! Speech!"

"There was a whole bunch of students with pieces of goalposts," she said yesterday, taking a break from her hobby of canning tomatoes. "Apparently, they had torn it down."

Shortly after Penn State knocked off the Fighting Irish, an estimated 1,200 students took to the State College streets. Their destination: Beaver Stadium.

Despite a locked gate, students infiltrated the stadium and quickly began taking down the goalpost with a hacksaw.

Their prize in hand, students led the severed upright on a tour of campus, stopping at the Old Main steps and the Nittany Lion Shrine. At each landmark, the procession paused while another piece of the upright was sawed off and appropriately displayed.

"It's better than sex," then-freshman Tony Graziano was quoted in The Daily Collegian. "Oh, I'm having a ball -- It's the most fun I've had since I've been here."

One student even brandished an uprooted bush -- "I found it," he said -- on his way to the quaint Paterno home, located on McKean Road, just north of the Penn State campus. The Paternos still live there, in a relatively modest house, today.

Even with a horde of students standing on her lawn, Sue never lost her temper. In fact, she said she never even thought about being angry.

"Why would I have been?" she said. "I couldn't stop them from tearing a goalpost down."

What Sue did next would be a shock to any student who had just vandalized university property.

"I went out and said hello and thanked them," she said.

The police who had arrived on the scene actually caused more damage than the students did, Sue said. By her descriptions, the cars that police officers drove onto her lawn to ensure her well-being left ruts similar to those in the tailgating lots after a home football game.

She did say students might have been better served just to cheer around the house, as she doesn't encourage vandalism.

The police made the students leave. On their way out, fans took the remnants of the goalpost with them, she said.

With No. 19 Penn State set to face off against No. 4 Notre Dame at 3:30 p.m. Saturday for the first time since 1992, JoePa's wife doesn't expect similar events to occur if Penn State wins this year. And if the south goalpost does journey from Beaver Stadium to her lawn again, she won't be home to see it; she'll make the trip to see the game live this year.

That same November night in 1990, after Joe Paterno fought through a crowd of rabid supporters, he didn't even glance at the lawn. Instead, Sue said, he was more focused on grabbing a bite to eat than worrying about the yard.

"He didn't say anything," she said. "There's things that are a lot more important in life, OK? It didn't faze him in the least."