Bill O'Brien's situation, what do you think? (edited)
I think Bill O'Brien has been granted a tremendous opportunity at PSU. For the next 4 years PSU football will celebrate wins like the super bowl and blame the losses on Mark Emmert and the NCAA. O'Brien no longer has to worry about respecting the legacy and traditions of Penn State because they got nuked by the Freeh Report. He can now rebuild penn state in his image without the pressures of following one of college football's greatest coaches. You think following Lloyd Carr at Michigan was hard, try following JoePa at PSU regardless of the circumstances. He essentially has 4 years to prepare for the 2016 season and beyond and nobody can question his methods with "That's not how Joe did things".
With smart, targeted recruiting strategies I think a school like Penn State, even with 65 scholarships, can be competitive in the B1G. I don't think Bill O'Brien is in as bad a situation as we think, but it could be a glass half-full viewpoint.
It's bad from a football standpoint, but very good from a job-security standpoint. It's pretty much guaranteed that they'll honor his full contract, and I'm sure he's making pretty good money.
Except I think he has a very high buy-out clause. Even if he doesn't win a lot of games, he has a guaranteed salary, and a poor record won't reflect on him in the same way it would without these sanctions.
Yes, this article says his buyout right now would be more than $4 million. Another article says his contract contains no escape clause relating to NCAA sanctions.
from mad scientist to eternal optimist
The only real positive is the lack of pressure he'll be under. His job will be a ton of hard work with little reward in the short term.
Penn State won't be competitive. Their 2012 class is ABUSMAL. With McGloin as their starting QB, they aren't gonig to do much, and without Bradley coaching up their D that won't be as good either.
Typo? Malapropism? New coinage?
It's that thing where your local public transit system sucks.
Pennterno State is not clever or cute, it just makes you sound stupid.
I think he meant Pennterno $tate.
Pennterno State sounded cool in my head but I guess it gets filed away with scUM, O$U, and the like. Made the change and downvoted myself.
with an upvote for the edit. Well done.
I get O$U if you're on, say, the scout free boards or something of the like.
Then people started breaking out the M$U, which, I mean really? Not only is it dumb but you seriously think MSU boosters have the wherewithal to pay players or something?
So stoked for our games against UMa$$ and App $tate coming up!!!
je ne sais quoi at this stage.
I give you props for finding a potential silver lining in this for O'Brien. I find your "O'Brien no longer has to worry about respecting the legacy and traditions" argument pretty compelling ... that would have been a near-impossible hurdle to leap.
That said, I'm not sure O'Brien fully escapes the general bad mood devoted PSU fans are going to be in as the reality of all this settles in this fall. In other words, I don't think we've yet hit bottom in this whole thing.
If O'Brien stick it out (i expect him too) and then eventually takes penn st back to greatness, he'll have a statue of himself where the joepa statue once was
Because in a job you want to focus on job secruity as opposed to job results. I understand the former is important, but why would you want to be in this type of situation?
Well, there are only so many head coaching jobs out there. Some, like Indiana, offer little on-field potential AND little job security. O'Brien at least gets one of the two.
I was very impressed by how well he was recruiting, although that will probably all go to hell (already has made it to purgatory). But I don't like how he sells NFL preparation as why kids should come to Penn State. With Hoke it's all about becoming better people, fathers, students, whatever; I don't think I've heard him ever talk about preparing kids for the NFL.
Agree. If O'Brien can come out of this okay and follow the latter part of the decade up with winning, big time winning and competing for Conf. Championships, the guy will have begun a legacy of his own. Much, much, much to happen for that scenario to not fall though, but the possibility exists.
He's in a really bad situation whether he will admit it or not, but its an amazing opportunity. Kind of like you said, he does not have to worry about following in the Joe Paterno mold or worry about the "that's not how JoePa did things." He can now build his own legacy, and given the circumstances, he should have more than enough time to do it.
If it gets to, say, the 2018 season, and he's fielding 3-9 teams, then maybe he should be booted, but many of the hardships he will face at PSU are completely beyond his control.
Gotta say, though, if this man wins a national title during his time at Penn State, or wins a string of Big Ten titles, it will in my opinion dwarf any and all accomplishments JoePa ever acheived.
A lot will depend on the 2015 class and those following it and whether top talent from Pennsylvania and the northeast start picking PSU again. If the program isn't viewed as poison, they will have a decent sales pitch. Come to Penn State, play as a freshman and then you can still go to three bowl games during your career (if they qualify).
Yes, perhaps the school will rally around him and celebrate every win. And perhaps the pressure will be off. But your point on recruiting is way off. I don't care how "smart" and "targeted" his recruiting is, they are not going to be that competitive in the B1G for several years--at least not in terms of competing with the top teams. They wil be no more competitive than the Indianas and Minnesotas of the confernce.
It is still Penn State. They still play in a 100,000+ stadium. They still have great facilities and they still play in the B1G (for now). I expect they will get somewhere between Indiana/Minnesota level and upper tier MAC level recruits.
OK - so let's say they get all Indiana/Minnesota level recruits. Even with 85 of them, those teams can't make a bowl. Now take a thid of the guys off of those teams. How well are they now? That's Penn State.
If you are getting recruits that are between the bottom of the B1G and top of MAC level, then you agree with me. You just proved my point. They will be no better then Indiana. "Still Penn State" only matters to recruits in Pennsylvania or who grew up a fan of PSU. All other major recruits can say the same thing about a dozen programs and not have to worry about the sanctions They are still Texas. They are still Mich. They are still ND.
It will take at least a decade for PSU to return to relevence as a football program. The stigma will outlast the sanctions. Recruiting will suffer even beyond the sanctions. Always liked Penn State but tough times are ahead for a loooong time.
I agree. Just because the football team will be penalized 4 years does not mean year 5 is going to be just like it was before. By then the roster will be composed of walk on talent and the fanbase will have been counting down the days and expecting results. Four years is a long time for a fan base to live through mediocrity. Year one of the Rich Rod era seemed to never end and their looking at much worse results on the field for a much longer time. Even if they do pull of a monster recruiting class in four years, a team full of high calaber freshmen still can't compete very well against anyone in the Big Ten with exception to indiana. No one even knows if this guy can coach either.
Your last point is one I've been waiting for someone to make: this guy has zero experience as a head coach at any level, so who knows how he would fare even in the best of circumstances. I mean, he could turn out to be Charlie Weiss light for all anyone knows.
It seems to me that O'Brien could use this as opportunity to essentially build a program from as close to "ground up" as you may be able to get nowadays. With the old guard essentially gone, the patriarch of the program dead and disgraced, and none of the old expectations applicable, you are essentially free to experiment, if you so choose.
Even with the mediocrity they will endure for some time, it doesn't necessarily mean that you cannot begin to develop the founding strategies and schemes of something that would be at least serviceable down the road. Further, O'Brien is likely doing this in a relatively secure situation, as Penn State is not currently in a position to make substantive changes to the staff right now.
If he can recruit well enough (for it wouldn't be "well") for the next several years, given the restrictions, he can probably get enough talent to get decent data on what will work and what won't for what he wants to do. If he plays this right (and he can manage it - this we don't know yet), the framework of a "new" Penn State could come out of this that just needs better talent to fully realize itself.
That's a best-case scenario, of course, but Bill O'Brien has no reason not to try something - he has very little to lose, as neither him nor Penn State have ever been in this position.
This as close to building a program from the "ground up" like you say. Personally as long as he keeps 90% of the current roster I think they will "return" sooner than some think. If they can only keep 60-75% of the current roster it starts to look more bleak.
Let's say they keep 100% of the roster. They won't be that good this year since they still have a poor QB, and their freshmen will be terrible (and likely all redshirted anyway). In 2013 you have fewer good players, and virtually no underclassmen worth a shit, so they'll have a hard time competing with the good-to-decent teams in the Big Ten. After that, they suck. Hard.
And how many guys they keep has almost nothing to do with how quickly they return, since those guys will all be gone before PSU returns anyway.
Ohio, @Virginia, Navy, Temple, @Illinois, Northwestern, @Iowa
Here's the first seven games of their season. So what's going to be the reaction (media's, ours, ESPN's, etc. etc.) when PSU starts out 6-0 heading into an away game in Iowa City?! Is that a far fetched scenario? I really don't think so. Ohio (not again, a different Ohio), Nebraska, Wisonsin, and Purdue are all left of course (but so is Indiana). 8 wins is not out of the question to me. Some may laugh at that, but if a good amount of players stay this team is still not too bad. The penalties are going to hurt more down the line than this year, I understand that, but again I'm curious to see how they start and what kind of attention they garner this season, especailly if they start off 5-0 or 6-0. (Hell, last year's Illinois team was praised and received "hype" before their mid-season meltdown).
If PSU can have 8+ win seasons I think people will be motivated to support the coach through the much tougher 2014-2017 stretch.
I don't know. No team gets that much hype when they start a season by beating 6 bad teams. That said, they'll really have their work cut out for them @UVA, @Illinois and against NW. You think they can start 6-0? I think they could also start 3-3, with another loss @Iowa the next week.
My guess is this is a 7-5 team that no one talks about because they don't beat anyone worth noting, and things go down hill from there. OSU, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa are all near-sure losses. Beyond that I bet they lose at least one of UVA, Illinois, and NW.
We got a lot of hype for being Michigan, but we were never actually ranked that high. And part of that was because we beat ND in highly watched games. Penn State doesn't have a ND level team to beat, so if they go 6-0, it will look less impressive.
I had opened this and the BOT thread, so I read both of them before coming back here. After reading the BOT thread, and realizing what he has to deal with inside the university community, I have changed my mind - he is screwed. I wish him luck.
I wish you were right, but I don't see it. As a Patriots fan, I really admire the way he calls a game and think he could be a great head coach in the right situation. But as irrational as that fan base is, I have to believe they will be calling for his head after the second five win season. And most likely, even if does a great job, there will be several of those over the next decade.
Well he just got a 4 year extension. I guess it was in his contract that the # of years any sanctions levied on the school would be added to the end of his contract
He could just keep using the quote:
"Im very upset...we should have been in the ball game...our players are trying their hardest and the coaches are screwin it up!"
He essentially has 4 years to prepare for the 2016 season and beyond and nobody can question his methods with "That's not how Joe did things".You would think that, but if there's one thing I've learned about Penn State from this episode, it's that their fans are bat sh*t insane.
Exactly, and if he doesn't do some things to make sure the product on the field between now and 2016 is decent, there won't be any fans left in 2016 to watch them.
He'll have a very hard time recruiting for the next few years. Plus, per ESPN:
Penn State coach Bill O'Brien said Wednesday that all of his players have been recruited by other team's coaches, and several players have received as many as 50 scholarship offers to play for opposing teams.
Sucks, dude. I don't think they're winning B1G championships anytime soon ("unofficial", that is).
Wow, I didn't realize there was that much interest.
But think about it - you have a full 85 on your team, and you have a shot at a title, conference or national. You'd take just about any player from that team, since it's a free player, certainly any starter.
So many of these schools take JUCO player with less promise than 2/3 of Penn State's roster, so I shouldn't be too surprised.