For In Motion, I'm Curt Parker.
Penn State's victory in the 2006 Orange Bowl is memorable.
It was a return to glory for some,
and vindication for others,
but for Wallace Triplett, a wingback for the Nittany Lions
from 1945 - 48,
there was a moment of realization that he was part of more than a team.
He was part of something special.
Wally, along with Denny Hogart, became the first
African Americans to take the field in a varsity game for Penn State.
That year was wrought with difficulties for the two,
especially when they returned to school for the 1946 campaign,
and found something that grabbed their attention on the schedule.
Schedules were done differently back then,
now schedules are done ten years ahead of time,
five years ahead of time a few years ago.
Now, they were probably put together just that year.
When he left at the end of the '45 season,
Wally had no idea who they were gonna play in '46.
We came back to the school in '46,
and at the bottom of the schedule was this,
the football schedule that hung over the wall in the locker room,
and at the bottom of it was University of Miami.
And he brings Denny over, and he said,
'Uh oh, we're gonna have a problem.'
Well, what happened then, was that
the Daily Collegian picked up on the story,
and started to write about that fact that
why would they want to play Miami
because it's a segregated school,
and besides, Miami wouldn't want them to bring their black players.
We started the season, but always,
was in the back of our minds,
'What are we gonna do about this game?'
So, almost midway through our season,
we were getting some fellows who were joking about it,
and everything, as though they were going.
It began to get serious, to the extent of,
you could noticeably see some of the fellas
beginning to question you, y'know, what do you think?
And this put the bug in my head of,
'Yeah, well, this is not a good thing,
we gotta make some kind of decision of what we're gonna do.'
They called a meeting, to resolve this, among the players.
And that's when the surprise of my life came.
They took an open hand vote, the hands slowly went up,
and enough hands went up that finally someone hollered,
'Let's make it unanimous!'
So they all made it unanimous,
and they walked out of there, and they cancelled the game.
They officially sent, they got a hold of the dean of the athletic department,
and officially cancelled the game in Miami.
Now, that was a big, big step in the civil rights movement.
Hardly anybody knows that story.
That team went on next year to an undefeated season,
with the birth in the Cotton Bowl, while setting a record
for scoring defense by only allowing 27 points in the regular season.
But the achievements for this team exceeded anything
that could be writtin in a record book.
All these things  that happened,
had happened to kind of bring us together,
like I said, because from now on I understood these older guys
who would come back from the war, and the things
that they had been through, and they were standing up for it.
It came down to, 'They're part of our team'
And we're a team, and they can play as well as anyone else,
and why deny that just because of the color of their skin?
We're in this together, we're a football team.
For In Motion, I'm Curt Parker.
