Penn State Will Hire Bill O'Brien As New Head Coach
by Tyler T. on Jan 5, 2012 11:01 PM EST
in Analyzing the Enemy
Email
Print
According to ESPN, the prolonged Penn State coaching search has come to an end. Bill O'Brien, offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots, will become the new head coach in Happy Valley, replacing the disgraced Joe Paterno, who was fired as part of the fallout from a child abuse cover-up.
O'Brien is 42 years old and has spent fourteen years coaching college athletes, from 1993 to 2006. Like Paterno, O'Brien graduated from Brown and began his coaching career at his alma mater. O'Brien then moved on to Georgia Tech, where he coached quarterbacks and running backs before coordinating the Yellow Jacket offense for two seasons, 2001 and 2002. In 2007, after coaching at Maryland and Duke following a break with Georgia Tech, O'Brien became a Patriot offensive assistant. Bill Belichick promoted O'Brien to wide receivers coach the next year. When Josh McDaniels left New England for the Denver Broncos, O'Brien received another promotion, this time replacing McDaniels as quarterbacks coach.
The 2011 season is the first that O'Brien has run the Patriot offense as coordinator. His offense has arguably been the best in the NFL, which ultimately bears little predictive power for how he will fare at Penn State. Before his arrival, Tom Brady and the Patriots were doing just fine, and there's a long history of Belichick coordinators failing miserably once they strike out on their own.
Making matters more difficult, O'Brien will walk into a hornets' nest at Penn State, an institution whose image has been irrecoverably tarnished. The Nittany Lion program will face civil lawsuits that will further darken the brand and draw out the recovery process. More accomplished coaches, unsurprisingly, turned down overtures from the Penn State administration, despite the deluded best hopes of the fanbase.
Western Pennsylvania, a place Ohio State cherry-picked in recruiting under Jim Tressel, will likely remain ripe for Urban Meyer. Nothing about O'Brien suggests he can compete with Meyer on the recruiting trail.
18 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
He isn’t even good. Charlie Weis and Josh McDaniels were better coordinators than BoB
by Revenge of the Fallen on Jan 5, 2012 11:27 PM EST reply actions
Can we just call him interim coach O'Brien?
Proud proponent of the 52 team Uber Conference
I hate to say it... I hope I am wrong... but this hire is entirely underwhelming.
Too bad – I was hoping that after 8 weeks and a day PSU would find a top coach.
This just sucks. Did the PSU administration piss off every coach in the interviews?
Lets not kid ourselves – the PSU legal issues weren’t behind this.
They would have been better off elevating a current assistant.
They would have been better served looking up the implications of “Show-Cause”
The Illini signed a better coach than PSU.
…you know I am right…
It could be worse, so I grade this a “D”
Proud proponent of the 52 team Uber Conference
HAHAHAHAHA
In additiona to hating the hrie, here’s a snapshot of what they’re saying at BSD:
Success with Honor still holds…
All those kids who played for us and won, guys like Lavar Arrington, Dan Connor, Paul Posluszny, etc… Do you think they suddenly feel like they played without honor? No way.
The shit with Sandusky is separate.
Success with honor means not selling your memorabilia for tats. It means not taking cash and cars from boosters. It means not letting an agent buy you a suit before the heisman ceremony…
We still have success with honor. The day that’s gone is the day I become a Miami fan.
I guess they see enabling child rape as honorable.
They’re also trying to figure out why they couldn’t get a better coach because their program is still a top job. Some really can’t see the toxicity of the whole child rape enabling. For the life of me, I don’’t get it…
Yeah that whole integrity schtick kinda flew out the window when one of your assistant coaches is raping kids in the shower and the leadership of the team and athletic department is complicit in allowing it to continue. Kinda trumps players getting tats and selling their OWN property.
The whole blog is in a really shocking state of denial that I find really hard to believe.
by jonnyphoenix on Jan 6, 2012 12:27 PM EST up reply actions
LOL! Child molestation in facilities brushed over/covered up by coaches and an administration
- compared to
1 coaching hiding knowledge late teen and early 20 something sheitheads were selling/trading their personal belongings and the incompetence of a compliance officer who will soon be canned.
or, for all that matters, even compared to -
1 Miami booster providing hookers, drugs, and money to athletes.
WE ARE… not even close kittens.
I love the series of blogs picking apart the testimony. My favorite – they pointed out the witness only glanced to discredit his testimony – apparently he was suppose to stop and stare at an adult man showering with an adolescent.
You have an adult in a shower with an adolescent boy who isn’t related to him.
In what world does reports of this not draw concern?
Apparently… the world of Happy Valley… because the witness didn’t stare and wasn’t graphic enough in his descriptions to the rest of the staff to satisfy the PSU fans.
Look kitten lovers – it happened… get over it… we did… and we didn’t:
…try to drag down others to feel better
…get tossed in mass from a fan site for trolling
…complain 2 months later that those involved were fired
As much as PSU hates it
…OSU administration, fan base, and the average guy on the street is just that much better than you.
…an administration and staff covering for child molestation shouldn’t be in the same sentence as 1 coach covering for athletes selling/trading their personal property, or even the Miami situation.
Instead, we moved on and positioned our program to be stronger than it was before with better coaching and improved monitoring.
Rather than trolling and looking for blanket statements to make themselves feel better,
PSU should have been taking notes from OSU on how to properly handle adversity.
PSU likes to talk about what they represent. The actions above of their fan base and administration tells what they represent… and nobody is impressed.
I disagree with rogerja – the coaching hire problem wasn’t that PSU is “Toxic”
It might be because the administration consists of arrogant arseholes who turned everyone off.
-or, more likely-
PSU isn’t held in nearly as high regard by the rest of the nation as OSU is, including coaches.
The comprehension problem isn’t based in reality, it is based in PSU arrogance.
WE ARE… penn state… not nearly as big as you think.
Proud proponent of the 52 team Uber Conference
To be fair to the PSU poster...
…he was limiting “Honor” to the athletes, not the actions of the administration, coaching staff, or fan base.
To be fair to rogerja
The poster does reference the program as a whole with “We still have success with honor”
You can overlook the actions of a few (even on issues such as child molestation), but “Honor” derived from arrogance and denial rather than their own actions is not honor, it is hypocrisy.
Proud proponent of the 52 team Uber Conference
I still think they should keep working on the whole “not harboring Pedophiles” thing first before they get started on the “Success with Honor.”
by jonnyphoenix on Jan 6, 2012 11:30 PM EST up reply actions
Is it really a surprise that the Penn State fanbase clings to the corrupted idea, like cancer clings to the body, that their program is more honorable than every other one? They’ve been sold this idea their entire conscious lives, and without it, they have no conception of who they are as an athletic entity.
The Penn State culture is an apt example of man constructing an objective truth, a god, out of its own desires. Maybe if we yell how much better we are for twenty years or so, everyone else will start to believe it, too, and can justify anything.
by Tyler T. on Jan 6, 2012 6:39 PM EST up reply actions 4 recs
Instant rec'd
Maybe if we yell how much better we are for twenty years or so, everyone else will start to believe it
Doomed to fail.
We’ve been trying this for a century with the Buckeyes and it still hasn’t caught on :P
You do point to an interesting line that shouldn’t be crossed.
All entertainment requires some suspension of accurate perception to fully enjoy. Movies, TV shows, and books require a suspension of disbelief. Sports requires us to believe the events are more than what they really are, and participants are more than skilled athletes.
When you step past “Suspending accurate perception” to making sports part of your moral identity, you run a gauntlet of risks – sooner or later, you will probably have to pay the price for taking so many risks.
Proud proponent of the 52 team Uber Conference
Is it really a surprise that the Penn State fanbase clings to the corrupted idea, like cancer clings to the body, that their program is more honorable than every other one?
Bear in mind the root of the Penn State ‘honor’ claim is a sense of inadequacy…at always being 2nd 2nd tier in the big ten the vast majority of the time. The ’We are…penn state" is like saying ’We are…some-Body…" b/c there is little to suggest that outside of self-affirmation. Thats why it continues…it is based on irrationality.
Just how deep that runs is only further corraborated by the simple fact that they have just had the worst, most heinous, scandal in sports HISTORY, and still somehow think ANYONE who still associates themselves with Penn State, as a player, alumni, or even casual fan, has a shred of ‘honor or dignity’ left.
by jonnyphoenix on Jan 6, 2012 10:03 PM EST up reply actions
They know they will never be OSU..the flagship school of the big ten…or even Michigan. Now…all that place is fit to be is a ghost town…you know…completely empty and silent…with the occasional tumbleweed running through it. Thats where it should be, and as far as the rest of the nation goes. That is where it is and will stay.
by jonnyphoenix on Jan 6, 2012 10:05 PM EST up reply actions
Tyler, what kind of degree do you have? I could imagine a solid paper on constructed truths and subconscious expression of desires in college athletics getting published.
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital." - Aaron Levenstein
He’d have plenty of case studies over at BSD
by jonnyphoenix on Jan 6, 2012 11:31 PM EST up reply actions
This hire doesn’t make any sense for any of the involved parties. I will be surprised if this deal works out at all.
Penn State: where you start as a tight end and by the time you leave you are a wide receiver.
by macdowellm03 on Jan 7, 2012 4:48 AM EST via Android app reply actions
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
Related FanShots on Along The Olentangy
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recent FanPosts
FanShots
Quick hits of video, photos, quotes, chats, links and lists that you find around the web.
Recent FanShots
