Men in White

A rich, rousing sports story, Men in White is an oral history of the college players who defied the doomsayers and rescued Penn State’s football program from the horrors of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

On November 5, 2011, the news that Jerry Sandusky had been charged with 40 counts of child molestation rocked Penn State’s leafy campus, unseating the university president, the athletic director, and head coach Joe Paterno―devastating the football program he had erected and scrupulously maintained over half a century.

Men in White recounts the saga of the student athletes who elected to stay and rebuild the program in the face of crippling NCAA sanctions, blistering heat from the outraged media, and radio silence from the adults in the school’s administration.

With the once proud program in free fall and their personal fortunes in peril, these young men refused to back down, toiling for five long seasons to rehabilitate the program and its ideals, culminating in the thrilling defeat of Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game. Their story echoes that of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, a cast of young men who boldly accepted the challenge of a lifetime, achieving success while shouldering the weight of a bruising political drama and ferocious media scrutiny.