Nice guys finish first

One of the people behind Penn State's success on the football field probably won't show up on the national broadcast Saturday night.

His name could be mentioned when the announcers for the Iowa-Penn State game are talking about the Nittany Lions' offense, but it will be overshadowed by the thousand of references to Joe Pa.

If you know the name of Penn State's offensive coordinator,  you either follow the program or you are a college football trivia champion. But it's a name and a person you should know.

Galen Hall has been on Paterno's staff since 2004, but his coaching resume is lenghty and laudable. He was the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma from 1966 to 1983 when the Sooners won two national titles and 10 Big 8 crowns. A newly hired assistant, he was chosen to replace the fired Charley Pell at the University of Florida early in the 1984 season and led the Gators to a 9-1-1 record and the school's first Southeastern Conference title. That title would be stripped away when the university was placed on NCAA probation for numerous recruiting violations, all committed before Hall set foot on campus.

Hall, who was the Associated Press Coach of the Year in 1984, guided the Gators to a 40-18-1 mark, including the school's first No. 1 ranking in 1985 when the 9-1-1 team was prevented from bowl participation due to probation.  It was the aftermath from that NCAA sentence that eventually cost Hall the Florida job in 1989 when he was forced to resign halfway through the season amid new violations.

He then bounced around the coaching ranks for a while -- even leading the Rhein Fire to a pair of NFL Europe titles -- and hooked up with the Dallas Cowboys in 2002 as running backs coach before joining Paterno in Happy Valley.

Through it all, Galen Hall remained a good coach and good guy. The Gators could have fallen apart after the Pell mess. But he kept things calm -- even though he was a notorious nail-biter -- and they kept winning. Eventually, the loss of scholarships caught up to the program and the record wasn't as good, but the Gators still went to bowl games after the 1987 and '88 seasons. Even Hall's violations were humanitarian -- he paid two assistants $22,000 out of his own pocket and directed a grad assistant to drive a player to a hearing for a child support case. But Florida, which also had its men's basketball program under NCAA investigation at the time and was scared of  a possible "death sentence," had to make a positive statement to the NCAA pooh-bahs and could not afford to keep Hall around.

As a beat writer who covered those Florida teams, I got to know Hall pretty well. I also used to see him at least once a year while he was coaching in Europe and scouring NFL rosters for talent. He  would stop by to see the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and we would talk about the old days and a particular sports writer (not me) who always made him laugh. We would avoid the way things ended in Gainesville because it seemed so unfair. I always wished him well and hoped he would land in the big time again.

So, if you hear Galen Hall's name tonight, or possibly if he shows up on your TV screen when they show the Penn State coaches in the press box, give a little salute to a man who paid a price to get there.