The Penn State Football Show

There are certain situations in life that instantly add maturity and responsibility onto the shoulders of people that, prior to that situation, were young, innocent, and care-free. Old western movies show a young boy whose father got shot, and just like that he has to be the man of the house. At just 11 years old, a boy went from playing in the fields with his younger brother, to protecting his home, mother, and entire family from harm.

For Penn State football players, students, and alumni, we have, in a way, gone through something similar. Last year at this time, juniors at Penn State were enjoying the best times of their lives. They were turning 21, going to the bar (legally) for the first time, tailgating, and cheering with pride for their football team before getting back to the rigors of homework on Sunday. They were going to class, skipping every now and then to catch up on sleep. They were going to the gym, the Creamery, doing crossword puzzles in the HUB, and relaxing on the lawn in front of Old Main. Months later, those same students have aged years. They're still turning 21, but now they're forced to defend themselves, their university, their institution. They have learned how to analyze and tear apart legal documents, pointedly make intelligent arguments, and how to stand up for what they believe in, while trying not to come across as fanatical. The spotlight is on them, these 18-22 year old kids. Their peers at Ohio State or the University of Georgia continue to live care-free, going through college as the rest of us have. If they vandalize a car it's just because their dumb college kids. If they protest something, there's no one there telling them they are stupid, blind apologists. But those Penn Staters, they've got some white streaks in their hair, a few extra wrinkles by their eyes. They've been through a year that their counterparts at Alabama or Oregon or any other university in the world would cringe at, but there they stand, proud, fervent, and loyal.

Students that go to Penn State will still have fun, and much will remain unchanged from the years that I enjoyed. Kids will be kids, but they will also learn very quickly how to be an adult and how to properly represent their university. Everyone preaches the importance of academics alongside athletics, and Penn State, regardless of what the NCAA says, has not just preached, but practiced this, and they will continue to do so now more than ever. Life isn't over for Penn Staters, life has just changed. We are Penn State, and like it or not, we are the man of the house now. Let us all move forward and do everything we can individually, and together, to restore the pride that once was and forever will be Penn State.

This blog has been completely silent throughout the entire coaching search, and that was probably for the better. Anything we would have posted would have been pure speculation anyway. I spent a great deal of time every single day reading the latest rumors on the message boards about the coaching search, the rumored candidates, and the direction people believed the search committee was heading in. I’ve never been so obsessed over an impending decision. In the end, this proved to be a colossal waste of time, because it became abundantly clear pretty early on that NOBODY had any clue, what was going on. Somehow, the search committee managed to keep the entire process completely quiet, without many leaks at all. Which, in this day and age, is quite impressive and should be commended, even though it was incredibly frustrating!

Even though I knew nobody knew anything, I still couldn’t help reading. I’m not going to act like I know what went on behind the scenes, because I don’t, and only those involved do. It certainly seems like Petersen and Munchak were two of the top choices, and it appears both turned down the job. Where O’Brien was on the list, we will never know. But he is our coach now, and I’m excited about it. I will admit it was pretty underwhelming after some of the names that were rumored to be interested. But sometimes a young, hungry coach, anxious to prove himself, turns out to be a much better (and more affordable) hire than a big-name coach.

I didn’t love the hire at first, but I didn’t hate it as much as most seemed to initially. First and foremost, if he’s on Bill Belichik’s staff, he has a great football mind. No doubt about it. I know people always bring up the fact that his assistants don’t succeed as head coaches, but that doesn’t scare me at all. Just because the others failed does not mean O’Brien will fail. Everybody’s different. Doesn’t anyone remember the main reason Aaron Rodgers fell so far in the draft? It was because quarterbacks in Jeff Tedford’s system don’t succeed in the NFL: David Carr, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, Kyle Boller. So 23 teams all bought into that bullshit and passed on Aaron Rodgers. So much for that thought! I’m not saying O’Brien will be the one to end this curse, I’m just saying it’s not a reason to discount all Belichik assistants. That’s just foolishness

I liked O’Brien better than Clements and Roman. He is younger than Clements and I like the fact that he is an Ivy Leaguer and from all accounts, is a man of great integrity and believes strongly in the academic side of being a college football coach. While it sucks he isn’t able to start right now, I respect the hell out of the fact that he is staying with the Patriots and not just bailing on them as many coaches do these days. As a Penn State fan, yes, it’s inconvenient, but it says a lot about his character and his loyalty, which is much more important to me in the long run. I liked the way he stated it in the press conference too, “I couldn’t come up here today and talk about commitment and loyalty, and then turn my back on the Patriots in the middle of a Super Bowl run.”

Along those same lines, after Munchak stated publicly that he had no interest in the PSU job, there were rumors floating around that he was still thinking about it. As much as I wanted him to take the job, I was not comfortable with the thought of Penn State’s coach being a guy that just a few days earlier looked into the camera and said “I am not interested in coaching at Penn State.” All the fans talk about what it means to be a “Penn State guy.” Well I don’t think being a “Penn State guy” means lying to the media, the public, and your players and bailing on them after one year. That’s why he stayed, I respect his decision. You could tell he was tempted, but the timing was not right for him. I hope he succeeds in Tennessee.

Right off the bat, though, I did have two main concerns about O’Brien: 1. Is this guy just going to bolt after a few years when another job, possibly an NFL job, opens up? 2. How is this guy going to assemble a coaching staff?

The answer to number 1 we won’t know until it happens or doesn’t happen. He has spent most of his career in college football. He seems to be big into teaching kids both on and off the field, so he seems like a better fit for college than the NFL. But we will just have to wait and see.

Here are the reasons I was concerned about him putting together a solid staff: He’s currently with New England, and promised to finish out the season with them, which could take a while, knowing how Bill Belichik operates. How much time and energy can he put toward hiring a staff? More importantly, who is he going to get? Certainly not many, if any members of the New England Patriots staff are going to pick up and leave a perennial Super Bowl contender to coach at a college in the middle of the biggest scandal in college football history. Other than that, his coaching experiences have been mainly at Duke, Maryland and Georgia Tech. All solid academic schools, but not exactly football powerhouses. Not to mention, the way things were going, it was looking like Penn State was trying to clean house, despite the fact that they had some of the best assistant coaches in the country.

Well this concern was quickly addressed in his press conference. He stated that he planned to have the entire staff in place in the next few days, which to me, clearly indicated that he had been working on this previously. I imagine part of the interviewing/hiring process consisted of questions about who his staff would be. More importantly though, was his announcement during the press conference that Larry Johnson was remaining on the staff. That was easily the best news of the day. If LJ isn’t the best defensive line coach in the country, I don’t know who is. Not to mention this helps tremendously with recruiting because he will help keep the commitments they already had for next year plus he’s just a great recruiter in general. The next piece of great news is that Ron Vanderlinden is also staying. After names like Mullen, Roman, Petersen, Clements and O’Brien were floating around, it became apparent that the coaching search was focused on bringing in an offensive minded coach (for good reason). I felt I’d be fine with a lesser known offensive minded candidate IF he retains two out of the three of Bradley, LJ and Vanderlinden. That way we could maintain Penn State’s sick defense and add a great offense. And O’Brien managed to do that. (At some point I want to dedicate a post to Tom Bradley because he is the man and deserved much better than what he got.) But back to O’Brien, I was thrilled he was able to keep those two. Even better, is the fact that he was wise enough and strong enough to let everyone else go. Nobody on the staff deserved to stay besides Bradley, LJ and Vandy. But I feared they were going to clean house and get rid of everyone. I was very happy to hear that he kept those two and got rid of the rest, that was the best way to handle it. Plus I loved the fact that people erupted in cheers at the presser when he announced LJ was staying. If O’Brien didn’t know how beloved LJ was before that moment, he certainly does now.

Then he started assembling his staff, which so far, I’m pretty pleased with. Just going off of resumes and prior experiences, my favorite pick up so far is Hixon, the wide receivers coach from the Buffalo Bills. First of all, we all know that wide receivers are the biggest prima donnas on the field. So if there is ever a position where having a former NFL coach will pay dividends in recruiting, it’s at WR. More importantly, look at the wide receivers they have at Buffalo. Stevie Johnson. David Nelson. Who are these guys? A bunch of no-name undrafted nobodies. And they have had a lot of success and scored a lot of points. Plus he coached a lot of great wideouts at LSU. So I think this is a great hire. An enormous step up from McQueary, who never even played WR.

The new o-line coach, McWhorter, has some great experience. He coached at Texas for many years, as well as Georgia and Alabama.

The biggest questions marks hires would be the TE coach and the new defensive coordinator. The TE coach only because his career has mostly been at smaller schools. But you never know. The new DC, Roof, has not had much success as a head coach at Duke or as a defensive coordinator at Auburn. For what it’s worth, Bunda’s buddy Mike, who is a scout for the Arizona Cardinals, said Roof is a great hire and is better than people give him credit for. While Auburn gave up a ton of points this year, Mike says they really only had one NFL caliber player on their defense. I guess we will see how this one plays out, but at this point, I will give O’Brien the benefit of the doubt. He wouldn’t have hired Roof if he didn’t have faith in him. Plus Roof has head coaching experience, which could come in handy.

The fact that these coaches are coming from all over the country will help with recruiting. Never before have we had strong ties to Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, New England, etc. This is completely different and should benefit recruiting. I also the fact that all of these guys decided to leave their jobs to join O’Briens staff says a lot about the respect they each have for him. Hixon left an NFL Wide Receivers coaching position for the same exact role at Penn State. McWhorter came out of retirement to join O’Brien’s staff. Roof just accepted a job A FEW WEEKS AGO at Central Florida to work for his close friend George O’Leary and is already leaving to join O’Brien’s staff. Clearly all of these guys must have a lot of respect for O’Brien. I believe they all realize the difficult position he is in, taking over a program in such turmoil, and they all are anxious to help him succeed and turn things around.

Although it’s extremely early, I’m very pleased with O’Brien so far. How successful he is depends largely upon how good his coaching staff is, and so far I like what I see. I actually have a theory… After the controversy and Erickson’s claim that Penn State would “de-emphasize football,” I don’t think Penn State could have dished out 4+ million for a coach. It would have been more bad PR and that’s the last thing this university needed. So they end up hiring a first time coach for under a million a year, and there are no bad headlines. But I have a theory that they promised O’Brien they would be willing to pay his assistants a shitload of money to help him assemble the best staff he could, which will really help him succeed. And the salaries of assistant coaches never make headlines, so there would be no bad PR there. I don’t know if that’s really what happened, but if it is, I think it was a pretty smart move and will end up paying off big time.

With this whirlwind of scandals and media frenzy, it's sometimes tough to remember that there's still football games to be played. And a hell of a game at that. At the beginning of the season we all pointed to this stretch (Nebraska, Ohio State, Wisconsin) as the make or break of the season. Well it is...but it has been overshadowed of late by the make or break of the future for Penn State and its football program.

Joe Paterno recently was diagnosed with lung cancer. It's troubling to see this happen so soon after his departure from coaching, and although the doctors reportedly feel confident that this will be treated, Joe's health is a major concern and I fear he does not have much left in the tank. He's one tough guy though, you have to give him that. He has suffered injuries that would end careers of young athletes and done so as an octogenarian. Let's all hope that he can power through this.

With that being said, this football team has a lot to play for on Saturday. As Pete mentioned, winning in Madison will propel the Lions to the Big Ten Championship game regardless of the outcome against Ohio State, but a Wisconsin loss at Illinois coupled with a Penn State win this weekend does the trick as well. Wisconsin (as well all other Big Ten games with the exception of PSU-OSU) will play at noon, so Penn State will know the situation at kickoff. Whatever the outcome, Penn State will come to play. These players showed something last week that was truly remarkable. Heart.

As five of us, tired and sore from a 12 mile jaunt through mud, water, fire and hay (but not enough hay), sat and watched the game off a DVR recording as if it were live, we screamed, shouted, and pulled for the blue and white to gut it out. They fought back from a 17 point deficit to cut it to 3 before their final drive fizzled out. Normally after a loss I am frustrated and immediately think of things they could have, should have done, and sure, there were plenty of those in that game, but that's not what I felt. What I felt was pride. They played hard, they played well, and they never gave up. Wins and losses only mean so much, but it's the character of those young men, and the way that they play that really matters. It must have been an extremely tough week on them, and it's hard to believe they were as focused or prepared as they should have been for that game. But there were no excuses. They had a shot, and just fell short, and sometimes that will happen, but it wasn't due to lack of effort.

The crowd showed the same class as the players. The sold out crowd, that had the stadium filled earlier than I have ever seen before for a noon game, banded together and displayed their pride with spirited chants following the game. It's something I'd love to see at the conclusion of every game, but sometimes it takes a terrible tragedy for you to realize how special something really is. Penn Staters everywhere over the past few weeks have come together as a community, raising money for child abuse awareness, showing support for the school, and most importantly, not shying away from being what they are...Nittany Lions.

For the remainder of the season, and even into the future, this team will be characterized by heart, family, and solidarity. They have seen terrible things happen, but have persevered. This is the toughest team in college football and they will beat Ohio State because they want it more. In a game like this where both teams are very even on paper, it really comes down to passion, and football can be one heck of an emotional game. Devon Still and Gerald Hodges have emerged not only as great players and leaders, but emotional leaders for this team. I expect them to be all over the field. Hopefully Penn State plays some man coverage and loads up against the option attack. I've got a lot of faith in this group, but regardless of the outcome, I know they'll give it everything they've got.

It's been a long time since the Penn State - Ohio State game featured two unranked teams. I don't think either squad is very good this year. As usual, they are both strong defensively this year, but both teams are limited by their quarterbacks. As such, I'm sure this will be a low scoring game, as it usually is.

I don't see either team being able to put together long scoring drives in this game. I think any touchdowns scored will need to come via a big play. So Penn State will need to either draw up something creative, or hope Redd busts one or Moye can catch a deep pass. The Buckeyes will not allow McGloin to march down the field and into the end zone on them.

I see the final score being something along the lines of 13-6. I can see either team coming out on top, but I'll take Penn State for the hell of it. This game actually doesn't mean a whole lot because, regardless of hte outcome, Penn State will win their division with a win over Wisconsin next week.

I'd love to see the team come out and play with all the emotion that has surfaced over this past week and put together a win over Nebraska that would never be forgotten. I Jiust can't imagine the team accomplished much this week at practice, and that has to put them at a pretty big disadvantage. If all of us fans were so impacted by this scandal all week, think about how the players and coaches were affected. There is no way Mike McQueary, Joe Paterno and Jay Paterno were thinking about Nebraska this week. Not to mention, the assignments of the coaches were re-shuffled after Paterno's firing only two nights ago. I think all of these distractions really inhibited the team this week, which would make a win over a good opponent that much more impressive. I really hope it happens, I just don't know that it will.

Anybody who has taken a mid-level sports management/business management class knows that there’s always an important game plan, sometimes referred to as a crisis management plan, sitting on the back shelves in case of a public relations nightmare. It doesn’t spell out the all the specifics, but it gives a basic strategy to control the damage, publicly defend the organization, and maintain as much of the image and integrity as possible. Well, apparently, the officials at Penn State University must have been absent that day because, to me, this whole situation reeks of utter incompetence of crisis management. Not only was Joe Paterno the media scapegoat, it turns out he was ostracized by his own people…the Penn State board of trustees and “powers-that-be.” Some part of me thinks they let it happen so they could force him out, a feat they could not overcome in the recent previous years. Chronologically cited, these are the lingering questions I have that make me believe this is the case…

1. Was the Sandusky indictment really a shocking surprise to anybody associated with Penn State University? There were serious newspaper reports of these allegations 6 months ago and, as far as I know, Penn State never commented or made any action. Why was there no action plan in place on how the media coverage would be controlled once this disaster broke?

2. Why were a mob of reporters lined up on Joe Paterno’s front lawn Monday afternoon and NOT on Jerry Sandusky’s or even Mike McQueary’s? Why did Penn State let this happen? This was problem area #1. Joe had to be frantically represented by his son Scott, who has nothing to do with the university. Basically, at this point, he was set free to the wolves.

3. Why was Joe Paterno’s Tuesday press conference cancelled? Why wasn’t he allowed to speak and defend himself and provide some answers that everyone wanted/needed?

4. Why is Penn State protecting Tim Curley and not Joe Paterno? After all, Curley WAS indicted in this case…Joe WAS NOT.

5. Furthermore, why was Joe Paterno FIRED while Mike McQueary was not and Tim Curley is placed on “administrative leave?”

6. Why was Joe Paterno fired over the phone? Very disturbing to hear that many of the PSU players heard of Paterno’s firing by watching Sportscenter! What was of so much immediate concern/action that had to be done at 10:45 at night? Couldn’t it have been put off till Thursday or even Friday where all parties could sit down and at least discuss the decision before making it public? Doesn’t this man at least deserve a full explanation of why they are firing him? Or better yet, shouldn't he be afforded the opportunity to publicly announce that he will be stepping down, effectively immediately?

Remember, at this point, everyone involved is afforded their due process. The funny thing is…Jerry Sandusky is allowed to continue living his life until his court arraignment. He will be rightfully judged by 12 people before he gets his punishment. But, Joe Paterno, a guy that is probably 5th or 6th on the list of people to blame here, if he actually is to blame at all, isn’t allowed to continue coaching football games until the investigation becomes final? Instead, his trial has already occurred within the media and public opinion where he was undoubtedly set up for failure and the board of trustees ultimately caved in to the propaganda.

Unfortunately, the way things played out in the last 3 days, Penn State had no choice but to fire Joe. This circus would only have continued and possibly gotten worse in the weeks to come given he remain the head coach and that simply would not be fair to the players and the university. It’s true…at this point in time, Penn State made the right decision. However, a lot of this could have been avoided if Penn State took better actions earlier in the game. Maybe they saw this as a way to force Joe out. Or maybe they are just really that ridiculously incompetent at handling a challenging situation. Either way, Penn State dropped the ball here. Penn State let it get out of control and ultimately had to make a decision that will resonate throughout eternity.