It’s not like we had eight or nine spots open. “There were a lot of guys coming back my sophomore year. By training camp, the kid with zero scholarship offers, who was resigned to quitting football following his high school career, had a starting job locked down on one of the nation’s top defenses. By the following spring, he was showing out in practice. So Ham used that year to practice, hit the weight room and get better on the field. Per NCAA rules, freshmen were ineligible to play. He didn’t make an immediate impact, but the tough, gutsy kid from Johnstown, Penn., set about to seize the opportunity in front of him. He was now on a trajectory that led him to four Super Bowl trophies with the Pittsburgh Steelers and six All-Pro selections. But now he was going to play big-time college football - and do so on a scholarship. Since he was going to enroll at Penn State, his destination wasn’t going to change. Ham, shocked by the news and the scholarship offer, immediately signed up.
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That’s why I’m indebted to them forever.” Of all the people that were instrumental in my life - when you’re 18 or 19 years old and you get that opportunity - I took that opportunity and was fortunate that they gave me that scholarship. All you want is an opportunity and they gave me that opportunity with that scholarship and I ran with it. “I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself," Ham told Sporting News. But at one point in time, one of the greatest linebackers in the history of the game had plans to never play again. Over four decades later, he has a gold jacket from the Hall of Fame and is considered one of the best Nittany Lions to ever play the game. Ham was going to go to class, work and be a normal student. He didn’t even plan on attempting to walk on to the team. The irony is that Ham planned on enrolling at Penn State, though football was out of the equation. So after watching some game tape - “there was no highlight package of Jack Ham” - and hearing Smear’s recommendation, the Penn State coaching staff reached out to Ham late in the spring before his freshman year of college. Ham didn’t have a single college scholarship offer the closest thing he had was an offer from East Carolina that, he remembers, would cover “$300 or maybe $400 in books a semester.” Smear saw potential in his teammate, even if no college coaches at the time saw it. When one of the Nittany Lions committed players instead switched up his recruitment and chose Iowa, Smear reached out to the coaching staff and suggested Ham. Ham had a teammate, Steve Smear, who was recruited and offered a scholarship by Penn State.
But it took one twist on the recruiting trail, and a good word from a friend, to change his life’s direction. It was a fact that stuck with him for most of his one year at Massanutten. He seemed destined to move on from football. He had no scholarship offers, no real interest from colleges during his time at the academy. He now admits he didn’t stand out, or even play as much, as he would have liked. Following high school, he went to prep school for a year at Massanutten in Woodstock, Va., playing what he thought was his final season of football. Now one of the most decorated players in Penn State history, Ham was - to put it kindly - a lightly recruited player out of high school.
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Little did he know he was set to begin a journey that would include four Super Bowl rings and eight Pro Bowl selections, eventually seeing him inducted into the Pro Football and College Football halls of fame.
Jack Ham remembers walking off the field of his final game at Massanutten Military Academy in the fall of 1966, thinking he had played his last game of football