IN DEPTH: One Goal - One Dream - 10 Games

Penn Quarterback Matt Rader's Resume is almost perfedt, except for one thing? Instead, he'll tell you All-Ivy tailback Jim Finn is the reason for the team's success and talk of his own personal goals -- which are the same as his team goals. Except for one goal. He wants the one thing that has eluded him for four years. While the Penn public and professional scouts have taken notice of his ability, he won't reflect on it until he has a winning season under his belt, something that has escaped him since he left Pennsbury High School (Yardley, Pa.) four years ago, when he won a state title. With Finn, a strong core of receivers in sophomore Doug O'Neill and Co., this may be his best shot yet, not to mention his last. "He's worked very hard in the offseason. I think he's in better shape. I think he's a little bit more agile," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "He's running the ball quite a bit -- at this point very, very sharp." Everyone who knows Matt knows he's done his part. He's primed to pass for 2,000 yards. "It's a case of the gratification that winning brings you with all the hard work and putting things together," Matt's mother, Beth, said. "He'd like to have that feeling just once at the college level. "Yes, there is heartache and disappointment along the way, but this being his last season, he's thinking it's time." · Matt Rader's arrival at Penn was storied last fall. It was the resurrection of a Quakers savior. The next great quarterback -- the first since Mark DeRosa -- to lift Penn football back to the promised land, an Ivy League title. Hopes rested on the sculpted arm of the wide-eyed local the minute he stepped foot on campus. The expectations associated with the No. 12 jersey became surreal. Every move was scrutinized because this was an Athletic Coast Conference-caliber quarterback. He played against the Florida States, Virginias and North Carolinas of the world. Rader, the Penn public was led to believe, could pick apart Ivy League defense with a cigar in his mouth and his bed slippers on before he opened his eyes. Every incomplete pass was magnified early in the season after Penn lost the season-opener to Dartmouth at home. Rader never fired back, complained or let the expectations decentralize his focus. All he wanted was to win. "I felt that from day one, there really weren't a lot of comparisons [to DeRosa] until the end of the year and people started talking about passing records," Rader said. "But I am just going to be who I am and that's all anyone can ask." He left high school with more options than most people ever dream of having. But he never won a football game as a starter at the college level before coming to Penn. As a sophomore at Duke he started five of the team's 11 games, and while his numbers were respectable, he never earned a victory as a starter. "I saw a lot of negative when I was down at Duke. When I was there for a solid week, I couldn't even buy a newspaper," Matt's mother Beth said. "Of course there was always a quarterback controversy because they never knew who was going to start." The burning desire to get back to the winning feeling he had been so accustomed to was all Rader needed to silence the voices inside and outside his head. He had gone to a school to be a quarterback so he could control his own destiny -- carrying a team on his actions, not his words. Rader passed for 1,832 yards last season, fifth best on Penn's all-time list, including 334 yards passing against Brown. When all was said and done, he had led his team to a 6-4 record overall, 5-2 in the Ivy League.* · *Just as quickly as he could say he had the elusive winning record, it was all stripped from him when former defensive lineman Mitch Marrow was found to be ineligible for all but one game of the '97 season. His accomplishments faded away in the ocean of paperwork and NCAA sanctions, and a 1-9 record. All of a sudden, Rader's achievements were reduced to an end result of one win and faded memories of celebration. The Penn football team remembers winning the games, but the asterisk won't. Rader was once again left to pick up the pieces and start over. It was the second year in a row. "In the record books, my last two years have been 0-11 and 1-9. So it's my last year; I'd really like to have a winning record as a starting quarterback," Rader said. "I'd like to go out on a winning note." How did such a simple dream become so difficult for the couldn't-go -wrong kid? · Coming out of high school was like winning a lottery, or 50. Matt garnered so many honors and accolades in his three years in high school that he drowned in choices and had college coaches fawning all over him. After his senior year, Matt was offered over 50 football scholarships, a dozen baseball scholarships at Division I, and a handful of Division II scholarship to play basketball. He was Bucks County's premier athlete as a quarterback and All-State linebacker, pitcher and power forward. He played in every all-everything game. He was awarded one of the country's four outstanding scholar-athletes awards by the National Football Foundation. His high school coach Larry Green was sure the same attributes that made Rader a successful high school athlete would take him to the next level of success in the NCAA. Not just his athletic ability, but his brain. He was a coach's dream and nightmare at the same time. "I always told him, you're a lot smarter than I am, but this is the way it's going to be," Green said. "He always asked intelligent questions, and I think he understood I knew what I was talking about football-wise." The Pennsbury coach (now of Central Bucks East) viewed it as a bonus, not a threat. He told Rader the way the game would be played and sent him to work. Rader obliged in uncharacteristic fashion. His raw ability allowed him to become a superior defensive end his sophomore year, then a secondary player and finally the All-State Linebacker and star quarterback he was his senior year. He did the same in the classroom. "He was called a geek when he was younger," Beth said. "But his payoff was that window of opportunity that opened up for him at the end of his high school career. So all the time he worried about people saying, 'Oh, you're a geek,' he had a goal in mind." Combined with his scholastic achievements, as valedictorian of a 750-student high school class, every picture he painted of college became palpable. He was in control. The choice was firm -- it was Duke. "One of the things I always tell Division I-A kids is to understand that this is a big commitment you're making," Green said. "But it's not like a marriage, lots of kids transfer." Little did he know then that those words would resonate in his head three years later. · He could have gone to Northwestern, but they wanted him as a linebacker, as did many of the other 50 schools. "I wasn't sure that quarterback was his position, since he was an All-State linebacker," Green said. "He likes the position of quarterback, not the pressure so much, but the idea that you're in control, you're in charge." But Rader was in control of this choice, and the choice was that he wanted to be in control of the team. It isn't just his physical ability placed upon him by divinity. His work ethic and desire would be the reasons he would turn around the Duke program. "Matt will go down to [the gym at] McCreedy's place, work out and do two-a-days, come home ride five miles on his bike all through [the neighborhood]," Beth said. "Then come back and put on those damn platform shoes to improve his vertical, stop traffic or whatever, then come and ask me to throw him alley-oops. The one thing he knows is that white men can't jump." Work paid off. He had to wait a redshirt year, and then a year on the bench. Finally, by his true junior year -- having redshirted sophomore year -- Rader got the chance to take control. His first college start came against Northwestern. It was the same team that had heavily recruited him, but would not give him the option to try out as a quarterback. "[Northwestern] recruited him. He got on the field and you could see the Northwestern coach on the sideline thinking, 'Holy shit!'," Beth said. "Because he had recruited him, and Matt would have gone there, but the coach wouldn't let him try out as a quarterback." During that game, a trend began that would continue through Rader's stay at Duke. Statistically, he posted good games, but lost. Against the Wildcats, Matt was 27-of-46 for 289 yards and a touchdown. The effort wasn't good enough to warrant a full-time starting job. He only got half the starts and suffered from the difficulty of trying to resurrect a bad team alone. He ended the year 85-of-150 for 905 yards and 5 TDs. With the worst rushing attack in the country, and a defense that allowed 40 points per game, Rader was on a team that was going nowhere. "Matt was happy to get the crap kicked out of him. He thought, 'Time to step it up a level,' " Beth said. "But when the adversity is within the organization and not yourself, that is tough. That is part of growing up. That was the hardest reality for him. He never questioned his ability." Duke coach Fred Goldsmith decided it was time to build for the program's future. Among other conflicts, Matt was asked to switch to another position or find another school. · Rader wanted the pressure of taking the snaps and making critical choices. He also wanted to plan for his future. Transferring meant a Division I-AA school so he would not have to sit out a year. With the academic opportunities and solid scholastics, Penn was a clear choice. Bagnoli promised him the chance to compete for the starting job with returning senior Tom MacLeod. "[At Duke] I was in a situation where I'd either have to play a different position or sit on the bench," Rader said. "I've gone through too much in my career to be put in that situation and be kind of a cast off. I just wanted to play." By the end of his very first workouts at Penn, it became clear that Rader was the man. And he once again had a chance to win a college football game under center. · If not for that asterisk, maybe Rader would talk about loftier goals, although probably not. Matt has the physical abilities to play in the NFL. He has been looked at and spoken to by scouts. The NFL is a boy's dream, but Rader is as close to a grown man as a college kid can be, and he is a realist. "Whatever happens, happens. I think he has had enough hard knocks in his college career that if it doesn't happen, he'll go on," Beth said. "He never looks back, never. No matter what disappointments happen, even if it was yesterday, it's over." Rader concedes he would like to go to an NFL camp if he is not drafted. A simple desire, with no more than a lingering thought. "If he gets a shot, nobody is going to work harder," Green said. "I think you'd be foolish not to look at him. He's got the arm strength. He runs well for a big guy. Certainly he has a good shot." As a Wharton student majoring in finance, Matt knows he could be successful in the business world. He could work on the stock exchange as he did last summer. But, for now, he has only one thought on his mind. Maybe more like 10 thoughts. · "If I could sum up Matt, he is probably the most competitive kid I have ever coached," Green said. Rader has faced adversity since he entered the college ranks. But his perspective has kept him focused. Focus and his parents, who he concedes have been his inspiration. But one thing eludes Rader. Forget the NFL, forget the records and the comparisons. "If we win the championship, we are not going to talk about that guy anymore," Finn said of his best friend DeRosa. Make no mistakes, Rader wants the title, and he wants to go 10-0. But he'd rather not talk about it, he'll just pave a 2,000-yard road and let the team take the glory -- then fade away into humility.

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