No, he’s not replacing JoePa. But coach Herman Boone will be coming to Penn State as part of the Student Programming Association’s Distinguished Speaker Series. The speech will take place on Feb. 22 in Eisenhower Auditorium. Coach Boone was portrayed by Denzel Washington in the tremendously successful Disney movie Remember the Titans.

In 1971, Boone was named the head coach of the newly integrated T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia in 1971. The racial tensions in the recently integrated school (T.C. Williams, an all-black school, was merged with predominantly white George Washington High School and Hammond High Schools) threatened to erupt into chaos, but the school was brought together by the successes of its football team, headed by Boone and former head coach of Hammond High School Bill Yoast. The two were able to put aside their differences and serve as a unifying force for a community grappling with racial differences.