Vinny Testaverde, a cheerleader, a sweatshirt and some laughs

Happened to catch a replay of the 1986 Fiesta Bowl Friday night on Comcast.

The game was filled with story lines that are still talked about today.

My favorite one is known by only a hand full of my former Penn State manager friends. But it's a good one, and I thought  I would share it with you today.

The year before we played Miami in Arizona, we played Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl for the national title. We happened to practice at Miami's practice facilities while and South Florida. One of our fellow managers on a night out happened to bump into a Miami cheerleader who had not gone to the Hurricanes' bowl game for one reason or another, and they struck up a friendship.

After we returned to State College, the manager and cheerleader kept in touch -- however one managed to do that before email, text messages and Facebook.

At one point she asked him to send her an extra large Penn State hooded sweatshirt, which he claims he did.

We were all quite surprised when in December of that year the Centre Daily Times ran a picture of Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde arriving in New York with the cheerleader and wearing the hooded Penn State sweatshirt.

Of course, we all had to take his word for it that it was the cheerleader in the photo and that was the sweatshirt.

Click here to order Vinny Testaverde’s proCane Rookie Card.



(timesleader.com)