When Sean Lee stepped onto the Beaver Stadium field for his first collegiate scrimmage, he had some investigating to do.
"Is it real?" Lee said about the grass. "I thought it was artificial, it was so nice."
Yes, it was real. And now, the senior linebacker gets to experience the rush of a home game and the feel of the grass during the game one last time.
Lee has recorded 302 tackles as a Nittany Lion, the fifth linebacker at Penn State to top 300. His former teammate, Dan Connor, ranks No. 1 with 419 tackles.
The linebacker has continued the tradition of "Linebacker U" while simultaneously making a name for himself despite bad luck with injuries.
"If you set yourself up and work hard like that, [head coach Joe Paterno] knows you as a leader," Lee said.
Recruiting Battles
A kid who had focused more on basketball than football and grew up idolizing Michael Jordan was about to make a switch in priorities.
Before, football was just for fun. But as his high school career continued, Lee realized he moved more like a linebacker than a point guard.
Although high school football coach Jim Render was glad Lee was also playing basketball for Upper St. Clair, a high school about 10 miles from Pittsburgh, the coach wanted his player to focus on football. Lee agreed -- a decision that would set his career as a football player.
The competition between university recruiters came to a head when Upper St. Clair traveled to play Bethel Park, one of the school's rivals.
Linebacker coach Ron Vanderlinden came to visit from Penn State. Render remembers how Lions defensive coordinator Tom Bradley was about to offer Lee a scholarship, but he first wanted Vanderlinden to watch the linebacker in person.
Lee played what he considered perhaps the best game of his high school career, starring in all facets of the game.
Performing well on the field was one thing, but impressing one of college football's most legendary coaches is another.
One day like any other, Lee walked into school to find Joe Paterno leaning casually against the wall in the athletic wing.
"I saw him, and the first thing I noticed -- he's changed his glasses since then -- was how thick his prescription was," Lee said. "His eyes were bigger, it was like magnified, you know?"
It didn't take long for the linebacker to find out just how witty and personal the coach could be.
"He messes around me being Irish and him being Italian," Lee said. "He's made a few cracks on that. But he hasn't done too many jokes toward me."
And Lee tries to returns the favor.
"I've just tried to do a squeaky voice kind of with a little bit of an accent," Lee said with a laugh. "Everybody's got their Joe impression and none of them are really good."
When the coach talked with Lee for the first time, the conversation went from Lee's grandfather to the coach's past in Brooklyn.
But make no mistake about it, the talk quickly came down to business.
"He said, 'So you considering coming to Penn State or what?' " Lee said. "And I wasn't going to say no to him. So he had me on the spot like that."
Regardless, Penn State wasn't a slam dunk.
West Virginia was the first to make an offer to Lee when Rich Rodriguez was its coach. Receiving an early offer from Iowa, Lee took official visits to the schools and said he seriously considered them.
But things got a little easier when Penn State and Iowa squared off in 2004. Lee attended the game and got to see two coaches in Paterno and Kirk Ferentz, both teaching hard-nosed, fundamental football.
The 6-4 game left both fans and players frustrated, but it's how Lee decided between the two schools. Each team had its own set of top-notch linebackers with the Hawkeyes' Abdul Hodge and Chad Greenway opposing Penn State's Posluszny and the then-freshman Connor.
"What it came down to was I saw some of the guys like Paul and Dan, and I thought I was similar to and wanted to play like them," Lee said. "And a lot of it came down to distance."
Battling Back
Everything was going well for Lee in his Penn State career until one fateful April day.
He was about to enter the 2008 season after he posted 90 tackles in 2006 and pushed a season total up to 138 in 2007, finishing second in the Big Ten in tackles behind only Connor.
Penn State was also coming off an Alamo Bowl win against Texas A&M, a win Lee thought spearheaded the next season.
But horror struck in spring 2008 when Lee suffered the torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) that caused him to miss the entire year. Lee said he was rushing the quarterback, and when the signal caller moved out of the pocket, the linebacker tried to cut while running at full speed at the same time his leg was coming down.
"I had just slipped a little bit, and it popped," Lee said. "It felt like my knee had dislocated. So I reached down and grabbed it, and it was fine. And I said in my head, 'I tore my ACL.' Not even knowing what it felt like, I said, 'This has to be what it is.' "
This was nothing he had ever experienced before.
In camp his freshman year in 2005, Lee remembers partially tearing his medial collateral ligament (MCL). With all the schoolwork, the rehab and fighting for playing time, Lee admitted he got a little homesick through early fall.
Instead of letting it overwhelm him, Lee continued to work hard both on and off the field. He described his first-year approach as keeping his head down, shutting his mouth and working hard.
The difference was that the MCL injury wasn't a definitive season destroyer, but the ACL was.
"An injury like that, it's black and white," Lee said about his ACL injury. "You know you're done for the season. You know you have a long rehab. You're in tears thinking you put all this work in."
Still, Lee persevered.
He had a choice: act as a coach and help the fellow linebackers or completely remove himself from the team.
Lee chose to be on the sidelines. Although he sometimes had a strong urge to just go out there and help make a play, he made sure to remain active solely on the sidelines.
"To be honest, I figured Sean would drive everybody nuts," Render said. "I didn't think he could get into the coaching role that he was given. I thought he'd be pacing the sidelines like a wild man."
Forget about coming back and being the same. As time passed, Lee came to believe he would return even better than before.
In the gym, Lee faced a long rehab process for an injury he'd never experienced to that extent before.
Lee returned against Akron this September and ranks second on the team with 63 tackles this season, despite missing three games with minor injuries.
"With any adversity, you find the positives and run with it," Lee said.
Looking forward
A native of the Pittsburgh area, it comes as no surprise that Lee's dream is to continue his football career with the Steelers.
Lee fondly remembers 1996, when the Steelers lost to the Cowboys in the Super Bowl. Despite the defeat, Lee idolized Pro-Bowl linebackers Greg Lloyd and Kevin Greene. For him, they were the perfect example of tough blue-collar defenders.
But he doesn't take anything for granted -- simply playing in the NFL would be a dream come true, he said.
There are two regular season games and a bowl game left before Lee forever hangs up the no-named, white-heavy Penn State jersey -- plainness he thinks makes the uniforms intimidating -- but the pros are taking notice.
In fact, Render said he got a letter from the Oakland Raiders earlier this week, asking him about Lee.
Was he late to class? Is he a good person?
No hesitation from the coach.
"You're going to get a quality football player both on the field and off the field," Render said. "I would think the National Football League -- that's the kind of guy they really want."
Football remains Lee's passion. But any player's professional football career could best be described as a trip into the unknown. Even so, Lee can see himself staying in the game even after he hangs up the pads for good.
"Some of me said, 'I definitely want to stay in it after I'm done playing,' but you can't say that for sure," Lee said. "I have a finance degree, and I'm very interested in that, and I'm sure as I look more, I could look into a job into that area."
But this weekend is all about rebounding from last weekend's loss to Ohio State, a loss that crushed Rose Bowl hopes -- and one final chance to take a piece of Beaver Stadium with him.
"Maybe I'll take some grass off my spikes," Lee said. "But I'll have so many memories to take with me. Every time I step into that stadium from here on out, I'll probably wish I was playing on the field."
