Son Keith gets to face off against his dad Irv’s former team and coach

By Cliff Kirkpatrick
Gazette-Times reporter

An official Pankey family reunion will occur today in Happy Valley, Pa.

The backdrop will be Beaver Stadium where the Oregon State football team faces No. 19-ranked Penn State in a nonconference game.

When OSU sophomore starting outside linebacker Keith Pankey steps onto the legendary field he’ll be following his father’s footsteps. There will be several family members there to watch.

Pankey’s father, Irv, played for the Nittany Lions from 1977-79, earning second-team All-American honors at offensive tackle his senior season. He went on to play for the Los Angeles Rams for 11 years and Indianapolis Colts for two.

The father will be on the sidelines wearing his Penn State letterman jacket for this special occasion.

He plans to hobnob with the Penn State elite and watch his son. Penn State will honor its 1973 unbeaten team at the game, so that makes for a bigger party this weekend.

“He’s convinced that they are going to put a beat down on us, and I have to tell him otherwise,” Keith Pankey said. “He’ll be rooting for them. I hope we beat them so I can have bragging rights for a lifetime.”

Irv Pankey is an assistant head coach for the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, Calif., and will miss his team’s game for this one. His team’s schedule doesn’t allow him to see his sons play college football often.

When the game was made official in December, it became a must-see event and he got permission to take his game off. It’s a rare occurrence that his son plays against a mentor and former coach, Joe Paterno.

“It’s going to be a big day,” Irv Pankey said. “It’s not often this happens. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to have your son play your old school. These teams may never play again. I had to be there.”

Keith Pankey’s twin brother, Kevin, is a tight end for the Beavers but won’t be on the trip. He’s a year behind because he delayed enrollment as a greyshirt and is using this year as a redshirt season.

That hasn’t stopped the father-son rivalry from going strong since the announcement. Several high school friends of Irv Pankey and a large family contingent from the East Coast will be at the game.

“He likes to jaw jack because he wants us to be beat,” Keith Pankey said. “But I think if we pull this one out, he’ll be one proud guy. I think he’s really proud of me playing the coach who coached him.”

Coaching against a former player’s child hasn’t been lost on Paterno. This is his 43rd season in charge of Penn State, and he figured this would begin to happen eventually.

“Pankey was a great kid,” Paterno said. “You know, if the kid’s anything like his old man, it will be a fun game for Irv. Irv was a great guy to coach and I enjoyed coaching him. It’s funny, last week (former player Wally) Richardson’s brother’s playing against us. This week we’ve got Pankey’s kid playing against us. I must be getting old.”

Keith Pankey was busy beyond the usual game preparation this week. He made ticket arrangements to counter his father’s influence by placing his family in the OSU section, saying he needs someone on his side.

Even the media jumped on this story, especially those covering Penn State. Keith Pankey was on a conference call with several reporters and had individual phone interviews.

“Once the game starts I’ll be biased, but I really want him to play well,” Irv Pankey said. “I just want him to play his game. It’s just like any other game, but he can’t lose focus in that atmosphere.”

All the attention he received because of his father is nothing new. People talked to him about his dad through high school. The family’s life has been wrapped around football since the children were born.

“I try to get away from it a little bit, but I understand it comes with the territory,” Keith Pankey said. “In high school we didn’t have a life. It was always football, football. He never told us we needed to play football. We just grew up knowing if we are going to do something, we have to do it right. Football turned into a goal for me, and I had to focus.”

Keith Pankey has an advantage over his teammates in dealing with the more than 107,000 people expected in the stands. He attended a Penn State camp and worked out inside the stadium before joining OSU.

He has also been to one game when his father was a graduate assistant coach in 1996. His family lived in Atlanta that fall while Irv Pankey began his coaching career, so there wasn’t time for many visits.

While there will be various emotions surrounding the game for the Pankeys, Keith wants to control them. He wants to make his own way in life, but isn’t afraid to cross paths with his past.

“It’s an important game for me personally, but it boils down to we have to win this game,” he said. “We threw away an opportunity last week. We don’t get a chance like this often. This is a big-time school, big-time program. We have a lot of respect for the program but it’s an opportunity to put Beavers football on the map, beating a team like that in their house. That’s the atmosphere in college football.”