The Nittany Turkey

Primarily about Penn State football, this is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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And so, the search begins…

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Penn State athletic director Dave Joyner announced that the search for a new coach will be “days, not weeks” at this morning’s press conference.

The search committee will consist of:

Dr. Dave Joyner, Athletic Director (Chair)
Dr. Tom Poole, VP Administration
Charmelle Green, Associate Athletic Director, Senior Woman Administrator (LOL)
Dr. Linda Caldwell, Faculty Athletics Representative, Distinguished Professor
Bob Warming, Head Coach, Men’s Soccer
Wally Richardson, Director, Penn State Football Letterman’s Club (good ol’ #14)

No boosters, fans, or Paternoists on the committee, unless you count Wally in that last category.

Larry Johnson has been appointed as Interim Head Coach, which is crucial to a smooth transition. Joyner referred to LJ as the “glue” that will hold the program together while the search takes place.

“We’re very fortunate to have a guy like Larry Johnson to serve as the glue right now,” said Joyner.

As for Johnson himself, apparently he has not (yet) thrown his hat into the ring with respect to the permanent job. However, Joyner says that if he did so, he would be given due consideration.

The three characteristics Joyner seeks in the next head coach are in the areas of integrity, academics, and championships. PSU ties are not required.

Names of other individuals under consideration by the search committee will be kept confidential.

Presumably as an offshoot of the notorious David Jones interview, Joyner was asked if the political climate at Penn State contributed to O’Brien’s decision to leave.

“I don’t really think that at all,” posited Joyner. “Obviously, the environment is whatever it is.” (Ahhhhh, the old sports stonewall: it is what it is.)

Joyner said that O’Brien’s intent when hired was to stay at Penn State for the long haul, but the Houston offer was something he could just not pass up. According to Dr. Dave, BoB’s contract buyout amounted to $6.5 to $6.7 million.

Wrapping up the presser, Joyner answered a question about Christian Hackenberg’s future.

“Christian Hackenberg is a tremendous asset at Penn State,” Joyner said. “Our job is to get the best football coach possible and lead them forward. We pledge to do that in a contracted time frame, with great thought and analysis.”

So, now we’re off to the races. The speculation circus begins, but I’m still taking the field. Looking at the “common wisdom” candidates, I feel there are good reasons that each of them won’t be the next head coach, although a blown ass-umption by this turkey is par for the course. I’ll stand by the odds I presented before the O’Brien departure became official.

I look at the short time frame Joyner has committed for the search committee’s ultimate choice with mixed feelings. I’m well aware that Penn State needs someone to be CEO of the football program right now; however, a quick and dirty search is fraught with peril. Will there be time for due diligence on each candidate? Will there be time to romance a candidate who is presently employed? Will the need for speed mean that Penn State does not hire the best man for the job? Haste makes waste.

(But a stitch in time saves nine. Please forgive my supercilious digression into old saws.)

As for O’Brien, I don’t expect him to go public with his reasons for leaving Penn State, other than to take a better job. He didn’t break his contract, he bought out of it. Those of you who think he had a moral commitment, well, go stew in your own juices. It ain’t gonna change anything. The past is the past (and that goes for you Paternoists, too), and we have business ahead of us. O’Brien owes us nothing he hasn’t paid with that check for $6.7 million.

The football program at Penn State has undergone a significant paradigm shift since the Paterno years, which is painful for some. O’Brien served as the catalyst and facilitator for that change, which was inevitable. Let us now look to the future without blinders on. The Penn State progress clock stopped circa 1979, flying a holding pattern under Paternolistic stewardship while, abetted by megabuck television contracts, the rest of college football predictably transmuted itself  into a big money business. We considered ourselves above the fray, lofting ourselves onto a pedestal of goodness and traditional values. We were better than the riff-raff who cared only about the money game that college football has become. That is no longer the case, but some of us cannot or will not acknowledge that. We have to sink or swim in that stormy sea now. Those of us who cling to the past and dream that we can return to those good old sweet Happy Valley days will retard the process of moving forward in the new era of college football. Success with honor is still our credo, even though we’ll never ever return to warm, fuzzy feelings of the house that Joe built.

The new coach will be once removed from the scandalous days of yore, which is another reason not to dredge up the past. O’Brien and some plucky seniors held the program together through some horrible times. Now, we hope to gain some stability and make progress toward the goal of having a competitive presence in college football in the not too distant future.

Discuss!

Sudden Impact: What Now?

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Time to revive Sudden Impact for some brief thoughts on the Bill O’Brien departure and its aftermath.  I’ve been kicking things around in my mind with the help of my readers. I’m going to pull stuff from their comments and my responses to collect those thoughts here.

Here’s a facetious suggestion from Big Al on December 30:

How about Ron VanDerLinden. He’s available, has previous head coaching experience and is a former Penn Stater (sort of). Plus, it would be a great way to give BOB the figurative finger on the way out.

Cracked me up. It would sure make the Paternoists happy, though.

However, Al went on to say:

Seriously, I almost wish they would hire an interim head coach, and let the new AD and President choose the next permanent coach. My biggest fear is that whoever they hire now won’t be able to get along with the new administration (with Peetz running the clown circus the next Prexy is almost certain to be an asshole) and we’ll be repeating this fiasco in December 2015.

And the more thought I gave that notion, the more I liked it. So I responded to Al:

On the whole, though, I like your idea about hiring an interim guy until the Old Main changes are made. It makes sense on a lot of levels, and it doesn’t put the cart before the horse. If Penn State isn’t a football dominated institution, then why would it hire a head football coach before the imminent hire of a new prexy and AD, and ass-ume that the new administrators would automatically be happy about a department head in control of so much money that they had no hand in hiring? There’s a chance, albeit remote, that the new administration would fire the coach before the season even started. At the very least, it’s a crap shoot for the coach.

Then, in a separate comment, I proposed this:

How about LJ, Sr. as interim head coach, as long as I’m making out-of-my-ass suggestions. He could retire as head coach when the new broom sweeps clean.

I believe that many people are thinking that Penn State will be able to hire a primo head coach in a day or two. It doesn’t happen that fast. But they cannot afford to wait very much longer, so an interim appointment makes eminent sense.

So, today, in response to a K. John comment, I wrote:

The forthcoming flux in Old Main is a big [factor in the coaching search]. Who will want to work in a situation where his boss(es) will change within six months or so? On the other hand, who would want to start coaching sometime around or after the Blue-White game? However, to wait that long to hire someone means a rudderless ship for half a year, right through National Signing Day and beyond — devastating to the recruiting effort, which is already in bad enough shape with prospects’ uncertainty over O’Brien leaving.

That combination of facts tells me that there’s almost certainly going to have to be an interim appointment, as Big Al proposed. Hell, Dr. Joyner is in a pickle here. O’Brien is likely to take most of his staff with him. If Schiano balks at Penn State’s overtures, which he should, if he is in his right mind, the guy who in my mind would be the logical choice for interim head coach would be Larry Johnson, who one would have to believe that O’Brien would have no interest in taking and who himself would have no interest in going. (Just thinking out my ass here.) He’d provide a transition and he would keep the waters smooth in a time of turmoil, kind of like an old, well broken-in pair of shoes. He would have to take the reins for an entire year, though.

Right around the same time as I wrote that, Bob Flounders of the Patriot News published this piece, which proposes the same thing. Great minds think alike? This might be the first and last time Flounders and I ever agree about anything.

The path forward is not as smooth as it seems to be. I’ve seen lots of speculation and found lots of underlying assumptions to be flawed, the worst of which is that the Penn State job is something any college coach in his right mind would want. Digging beneath the surface, I can find a lot of good reasons why a coach like Al Golden, who is secure in his present job, wouldn’t abandon it for Penn State. I suppose there are lots of nuances and my thinking is necessarily clouded by my lack of personal contact with these guys to determine their motivation.

What I find clouding lots of people’s thoughts is the notion that all other things being equal, a coach candidate would choose Penn State over all other offers regardless of how juicy those offers are. This Penn State pride thing gets in the way a lot. Express it this way, just as counterpoint: What coach would choose to move his family to remote Central Pennsylvania to run a program replete with problems and uncertainties when he could choose a prestigious program like UT-Austin? I mean, sometimes I hear this thinking that rationalizes Penn State as the best place in the world to coach. It just ain’t so. Call me a traitor for saying that. That’s why I think James Franklin will be the next head coach at Texas.

There are many fine institutions on par with Penn State or of greater stature. Get over the secular notion that Penn State is the be all and end all. (And Flounders, please don’t publish a story that paraphrases what I’m writing here, or I’ll think that you are getting the NSA feed from my cable modem.) Also, not only is Penn State inferior to a handful of other programs on the surface, but if you dig down you find the remnants of the Sandusky Scandal, the huge sanctions, the changing situation at Old Main, and so on and so on ad nauseam. If I were doing the hiring, I would want the prospect to strongly convince me how he (or she — oy, vey!) will cope with those issues and be able to surmount them.

A sign of the trouble facing the next Penn State coach is inherent in the crap David Jones published last night. The Paternoists are still hanging around wanting to have their way with the program. I’d sure as hell like to know the precise story about Ron Vanderlinden. At the time of his departure, I viewed it as an indication that O’Brien wanted complete control of the program and Vanderlinden, a vestigial Paternoist, was getting in the way. I believed that LJ and Vanderlinden were forced upon O’Brien, and this created friction between him and Joyner. Just who did what to whom with respect to Ron, we might never know. But it might have been the proverbial tipping point, to use a hack writing expression I abhor.

(Yeah, I’m a crusty old fuck.)

So, what do you think about this idea barfed up by Big Al, Bob Flounders, and me? Larry Johnson, Sr. as interim head coach — for a year. Your comments, please!

 

 

Done Deal!

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Get used to saying “former Penn State head football coach Bill O’Brien” because that’s what he is. Former head football coach.

Now that the speculation about the “whether” has abruptly subsided, we now must speculate on the “why”.

We know that BoB wanted to be an NFL head coach, and that he was driven to get there. At the same time, he felt loyalty to the kids in the football program at Penn State. He had to be torn.

Here was an opportunity to coach in the nation’s fourth largest city, an additional benefit, where he and his family could find everything they need and then some.

This piece by the much hated David Jones of the Patriot-News might provide some clues. (Those of you who have sworn to never read anything Jones writes might want to change your policy long enough to read it and take it for what it’s worth.)

I can certainly see the Paternoists driving O’Brien up a wall, and I can also see Joyner and Company doing the same.

If O’Brien hadn’t gone this year, his stock would fall in the eyes of both competing entities, the NFL and Penn State. My feeling was that last year he tested the water, but this year it was do or die. Just my opinion, folks, but mine’s as good as anyone’s except O’Brien’s.

So, as the proverbial smoke clears, please add your thoughts on why he left and what might be the best path forward, for better or worse.