Did PSU Learn Anything From Michigan?
So tradition rich PSU has made a coaching hire. From appearances it looks like this is way down the list of choices because of the scandal. PSU officials knowing the climate appear to have done nothing to avoid the same pitfalls Michigan went thru with their outside the family hire.
Ex- linebacker Brandon Short sent out a note saying he was unhappy they went outside the family, the coach is walking into a hornets nest and he has no idea what tradition he needs to uphold 15 minutes after the rumor broke on ESPN.
They go to talking head and famous alum Todd Blacklege who went with a pretty bland this is weird and I hope he does well no comment that basically came across as WTF?!!?
If you were the AD knowing you were in a bad situatiion wouldn't you gather your famous alums and get them behind the hire ASAP? You have PSU guys like Millen and Blacklege to send your message and gather some enthusiasm. They appear to have learned nothing from Michigan. I know the circumstances around the hire are different but the handling of the hire looks to be the same.
They do not appear to have learned their lesson, unless they did and the lesson is if we bitch and complain enough we'll get our way in 3 years and we can sacrifice the next 3 classes of kids by taking shots and laughing at how bad they are going to suck as we kill whatever slim shot this guy has of recruiting decent players.
I hope this guy negotiated a 15 million dollar buyout if they fire him before 4 years.
Look for this this weekend in the player introductions
"DT Jimmy Kennedy Joe Paternos Penn St University"
January 6th, 2012 at 10:35 AM ^
I was about to create a post on this very topic. This situation has an eerily familiar feel to it.
EDIT: Also, link to ESPN story outlining the infighting of PSU alumns.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:37 AM ^
It's the same but different. We weren't replacing a shamed regime. The players like Bradley, but there was no way the school could have kept him.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:37 AM ^
I don't even need to read this whole garabage post to disagree with it.
Michigan's coaching search (RR) and PSU's are in no way similar, other than the fact that they are two long established schools searching for a new coach.
The PSU scandal is unlike any issue in the history of sports, let alone college, or college football.
You have to imagine that those "PSU guys" didn't want the job after what has happened, who would?
January 6th, 2012 at 10:39 AM ^
He wasn't comparing the situations, he was comparing the hires of head coaches from outside the "family". I agree with his point actually.
January 6th, 2012 at 12:11 PM ^
Honestly I really don't care much about Penn State. I still have a hard time thinking about Penn State as a Big Ten Conference school.
But the OP, which wasn't intended as a 1500-word essay, raises a very good point. I had once thought that Three and Out would be a required-reading project for our friends in Columbus. But they seem to have had no problem whatsoever in pivoting to a new guy who wasn't just unknown to them a year earlier -- they hated his guts a year earlier. No problem; just "Beat Michigan!"
The OP quite rightly points to PSU as now sounding a lot more like Eric Mayes/Michigan, than Chris Spielman/Ohio State...
January 6th, 2012 at 12:36 PM ^
Something tells me that Ohio State fans would have had a harder time accepting the new coach if it was Bill O'Brien instead of Urban Meyer. And Meyer came from the Ohio State tree. So yeah, totally different.
January 6th, 2012 at 1:08 PM ^
Plus I think a year under the old coaching staff minus the beloved former hc (effectively what some alums wanted for Michigan in 2008) helped disillusion osu fans on the romanticism of "staying in the family"
January 6th, 2012 at 12:47 PM ^
January 6th, 2012 at 10:43 AM ^
I think you missed the OP's point. He wasn't saying that the circumstances surrounding the hiring were the same, just that there are similarities in the fact that they hired a coach from outside the family and there appear to be some people upset with that.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:50 AM ^
I didn't miss the point, alot of people are making it, Greenie said the same thing this morning on Mike&Mike
Any alumni who is so blind that they are actually angry with the "outside the family" hire, is just as ignorant as the dumb 18 year old who riotted after JoePa fired.
This was an istitutional issue from the top down, and not a recruiting violation one, but a child molestation issue. You have to dump house, and go a different way and sell people on a "New Penn State."
The issue with O'Brien is that he is from "outside the family" and unqualified. You can't be both, and thats why the alumni are angry and it will be very interesting to watch going forward.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:55 AM ^
Then you get these comments agreeing with the poster, mgouser Blue in Yarmouth comment: "It looks like this guy is just as much behind the 8ball as RR."
O'Brien is 100x more behind the 8ball then RR, he isn't even on the table.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:48 AM ^
You know there's a "reply" function
January 6th, 2012 at 10:58 AM ^
Right. So you actually agree with the post, if you would care to actually read it. He's saying that PSU needs to learn that a lack of support for their head coach will ultimately lead to bad things.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:06 AM ^
whether Tom Bradley (or others on the staff) ever knew what was going on.
The Grand Jury report showed only that McQuery told JoePa, but not anyone else on the staff, so it's really just a matter of did the other coaches know? There is no evidence that they did, other than "they should have knew".
January 6th, 2012 at 12:59 PM ^
How do you even know you didn't miss the point if you didn't read the OP?
January 6th, 2012 at 11:34 AM ^
You really should. I know that many think that Ziff is just a "pro-RR" guy (and I admit that I expected the post to somehow have that message), but despite my disagreement with his stance on RR, I usually find him to be logical and well thought-out on his views.
This post had nothing to do with RR. The point, which is a good one, is that PSU is a tradition rich school, just like Michigan. They have had a single coaxching regime in place for decades, as we did (Bo, Mo, LC). Making a change from a decades-loved regime is going to be tough, regardless of who is hired, and seeing what we went through, it probably would have been wise for PSU to either (1) hire someone with a tie to PSU (former star player who is currently an asst. coach in the NFL or at a decent college team), (2) hire a huge name like OSU did with Meyer that everyone would celebrate (difficult, given their circumstance, or (3), if you are going outside of the family, get the alums and former players on board FIRST and make them feel as if they have a say in the process.
Good points, Ziff.
January 6th, 2012 at 6:06 PM ^
I feel a little naughty with us being so in sync.
Mostly I appreciate someone actually read one of my posts and didn't input RR subtext where it wasn't included.
I feel like some people try to read my posts really slowly so they can here "Paul's Dead" and "RR is the man" in there somewhere.
I think maybe I need a formal burial so I can post free of RR bias.
You nailed my point perfectly and better than I actually said it. Thanks.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:38 AM ^
Actually I think you mean they didn't appear to learn our lesson. It never happened to penn state so it wasn't their lesson to learn.
I agree with your point though. It looks like he is just as much behind the 8 ball as RR was when he took the job. At least RR had some experience though, this poor sap doesn't even have that. Good luck Penn St....I think you're gonna need it.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:39 AM ^
obviously not. i'm sending a copy of 3 and out to all my psu buddies so they know what they have to look forward to.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:40 AM ^
They had to "go outside the family" for PR reasons. The old regime was so badly stained it would look like they hadn't taken the Sandusky incident seriously enough. In my opinion, the best thing for PSU football is to completely remake the program. That means an outsider had to be the one to take the helm.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:03 AM ^
they definitely had to "go outside the family", but they could have reached out to the former players and asked for support/made sure everyone was on board to avoid fracturing the support structure. they clearly did not. o'brien has the deck stacked against him far worse than rr did.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:09 AM ^
While I understand your point about outreach, I personally don't think it would have made any difference. If someone doesn't understand the need for a hire like this, I don't think a phone call asking alumni to play nice will make much difference. Some people are simply too far entrenched with the old guard to accept this, pleas from the university included or not. A separation from the old players, and Paterno loyalists may not be the worst thing here. While it may lead to some on field pains, it is absolutely necessary for PSU football five years from now and beyond.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:25 AM ^
They could have included some former players in the process in some way. Let them have their say and tell them why they were looking outside the "family". There would still be some hurt feelings, but it would have been a smart move for many reasons.
There wasn't much PSU could do once they made their hire. It looks like the news was leaked immediately.
January 6th, 2012 at 12:23 PM ^
just as long as that person isn't Matt Millen, for their sake.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:40 AM ^
this ^
they would have had to start the outreach long before the hire and actually, you know, listened to people.
January 6th, 2012 at 1:02 PM ^
And the alums would need to allow themselves to be reasoned with. Doesn't seem like that would have been likely.
January 6th, 2012 at 2:26 PM ^
true, they wouldn't have been able to get 100% support, but they could have at least minimized damages. right now it's just a shit show.
January 6th, 2012 at 3:06 PM ^
I agree that they needed to go outside of the current staff. If they admit that they need to go outside the family (even for the sake of perception), isn't it at least a small admission that - "yeah everybody pretty much knew what the hell was going on"?
If they don't admit they need to, they have deniability.
January 6th, 2012 at 3:09 PM ^
I don't see that this is an admission of guilt. This is taking that question and all the potential speculation off the table. It is a necessary move to put an impossibly ugly scandal in the past., or at least as much as possible.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:05 AM ^
They had to go outside, but this pick really seems like a stretch.
I refuse to believe that Bradley had no knowledge that his predecessor was a pedophile and was still walking around the facilities. I do think it's a tough situaton for Bradley, since Paterno and the sr. adminstration all knew and had "addressed" the issue.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:42 AM ^
To me, it just seems like a completely random hire more than anything else. While I'm not surprised that they bypassed internal candidates like Bradley and Johnson, I thought that they would go with either an established college coach or a leading coordinator.
O'Brien just seems out of nowhere. He has a lot of college experience, but nothing since 2006. I hadn't heard him mentioned for a college job at all. Does he have some connection with David Joyner?
I'm not saying that its necessarily a bad hire, I just don't understand it.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:41 AM ^
A lot of people thought they needed a clean start. It's an odd hire, but there were rumors that other candidates were avoiding the PSU job like the plague.
Would people really feel they learned their lesson if they kept Tom Bradley? Would people really feel they learned their lesson if they made Jay Paterno head coach? We don't really know how far this scandal goes.
If the new head coach wins, then the critics will be silenced. PSU needs to be supportive of their new coach and give the guy a fair chance.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:46 AM ^
I don't see that support coming any time soon
"Former Penn State All-American linebacker Brandon Short told ESPN.com senior writer Don Van Natta Jr. that members of the influential Lettermen's Club have a meeting scheduled with Joyner for Friday at 1 p.m. ET.
"It's unfortunate that coach O'Brien ... has not been made aware of the implications of him being in this position," said Short, an investment banker. "I don't envy him at all. He doesn't have support of the vast majority of former Penn State players and the vast majority of the student body and the faculty won't support him. I feel sorry for him."
Short said some members of the group were considering a range of options to express their displeasure, including asking current players to transfer and recruits to de-commit. Short told USA Today they were mulling a lawsuit in an effort to bar Penn State from using their likenesses or images for marketing purposes.
"It appears as if it is Dave Joyner's intent to disassociate himself with everything related Penn State," Short told ESPN.com. "Then a group of former players will now disassociate ourselves from everything related to Penn State."
January 6th, 2012 at 12:38 PM ^
Makes the RR era seem like kumbayah
January 6th, 2012 at 12:59 PM ^
Dear god, what a self-absorbed narcissistic ass. News flash: your glory days are over, it's about the current players now. Don't sell out their chance at success just to stroke your own damn ego.
January 6th, 2012 at 8:04 PM ^
Support your alma mater even if your personal favorite did not win the coaching search. You are only worsening the dishonor your program wrought upon itself.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:41 AM ^
I just want to know how Matt Millen feels about this hire.
January 6th, 2012 at 3:10 PM ^
How has your post not been moderated yet? It's still a score of 1 and I can't imagine it's been upvoted and down voted. That's some funny shit.
+1 to you, sir.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:42 AM ^
Totally different. Even if O'Brien fails, they needed someone outside of Happy Valley. I think at this point, PSU would take a RichRod type record, as long as they run a clean program. If he fails, you can fire him in a few years and rethink it. Their goal is not wins or losses right now, but to improve their overall image. I think O'Brien does that.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:45 AM ^
This whole thing is so sad and effed up, I hate to speculate on more problems.
It feels a little like crowing to suggest that PSU will soon be facing "house divided" issues like UM did with the RR era. Who knows what is going to happen; I am sure there will be painful adjustments as the University administration attempts to "rightsize" athletics in terms of power and priorities on their campus, probably amidst strong objections of many students and alumni. Whether or not their current choice makes that process even worse, I dunno, but I hope not.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:51 AM ^
Their 'family', such as the Titans coach, didn't want anything to do with them. As the search went on it became increasingly clear that anyone who was a remotely hot commodity was aiming for a different job. It's hard to hire your family members when none of them will return your calls.
As it stands they at least got a guy who has some cachet as a NFL caliber coach. So they have that going for them. In all likely hood PSU is going to spend a few years wandering in the desert. All kinds of investigations, the fact that PSU football needs to lie low for awhile, the constant reminders of the scandal as the trials drag on.
This really isn't the important hire. Off the field factors likely destroyed PSU football for awhile. The important hire is the guy after this one in five years or whenever PSU can start to rebuild. That will be the one that determines if they move forward again or pull a Notre Dame.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:58 AM ^
I think PSU took the sacrificial lamb approach to this hire. Realizing their program/image has taken a massive blow, and most likely could get worse, they went with a hire where they really have nothing to lose. I don't think anyone who was seriously interested in that job was going to come out successful and this way if he struggles for a couple years while they work to improve their reputation than so be it. If he wins that's really just an added bonus but it really comes down to who they hire after this down period, where they can sell to candidates that they can bring back the tradition of PSU football and won't have to deal with all of the recent events fresh in everyones mind.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:26 AM ^
I'm not being critical of the hire or their process. They are in a tough situation. All I'm saying is that being critical of the coach no matter who it is is not going to help.
If you were a PSU famous alumni I would tell you this. Regardless of how you feel you can do 2 things.
1. Help this guy in anyway possible and if he fails we'll replace him and if he succeeds we'll all be happy.
2. Take shots at the guy and he will surely fail because he won't be able to get recruits or support.
Are you prepared to waste 3 years of football and sentence all the kids on the team to doom fro the next 3 years just so you can get what you want?
The answer to me is clear, but I know that for some people it is not.
The process looks like a mess. If they wanted to go outside the family then why did they go after Munchak? If they thought they could stay within the JoePA tree and avoid a media relations disaster I think they should based on this.
January 6th, 2012 at 12:44 PM ^
January 6th, 2012 at 10:48 AM ^
But he has to learn from Hoke and hire great assistant coaches. Open up the PSU coffers and pay big money for great assistants. With good coaching comes recruits and wins, and they will be fine.
If they are cheap with assistants, no way this works.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:37 AM ^
I wonder where those assistants are coming from. Are they truly cleaning house or will they keep a lot of the current staff? O'Brien doesn't have his own staff to bring over, nor much time to assemble one. I'm not sure why this opportunity is going to look so great to any top-flight assistants.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:54 AM ^
I respectfully disagree. Throwing money at a problem situation won't help; you need the alumni and students behind the hire and they simply aren't.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:48 AM ^
I agree in the most general sense. I also think there is one further parallel: the loss of the "head of the family." Even though JoePa is still alive, he is done with PSU football. In the same way that Bo was the head of the Michigan family for so many years, JoePa (probably moreso than Bo, even) has been the head of the PSU family. They've lost their head now, and who's going to step up to be that uniting leader? Michigan really didn't have anybody step up (and I'd say they still haven't, though the waters are certainly more calm now), and we all saw how the family turned against itself. With the comments from LaVarr Arrington and Brandon Short, I'd say PSU is in desperate need of someone who can step up.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:50 AM ^
Very interesting point of view. Although, I doubt even the dumbest NFL players would be hesitant to say "Joe Paterno's Penn State University" considering what's been going on under his watch the past few years.
January 6th, 2012 at 8:14 PM ^
I might gag if that happens. It's not even schadenfreude since we've been putting up with the same nonsense from "Michigan Men."