First, we’ll address the two questions we’ve been asked the most in the last few days:
Yes, we feel bad about the RIP Penn State Football article; and no, Brandon Short is not on Laschout’s staff.
OK, so maybe declaring Penn State football dead on Friday was a tiny bit of an overreaction. Or even a huge overreaction for that matter. Great writers (which we are not) always say that you should never pen an article in the immediate aftermath of an event because emotion will take over and replace common sense. As you all can tell, we don’t necessarily operate like that here. This blog is and always will be about raw emotion and reaction. I’m sure there will be plenty of times we say things we regret after the fact, but that’s what it’s all about.
Having said that, the main focus of Nittany Nation right now needs to be giving full support to Bill O’Brien.
Don’t get us wrong, it’s still OK to be angry about what has transpired at this University since early November. It’s still fine to question the leadership of President Erickson and certainly athletic director Dave Joyner. It’s also fine to question the (in our opinion) cowardice actions of the Board of Trustees who have done everything in their power to sacrifice the golden goose in order to save themselves from further and necessary scrutiny.
Despite all that, the one man who needs our unconditional support at this time is the new head coach. Simply put, the last two days of Bill O’Brien has been the best thing that has happened to this University in the last two months.
In his introductory press conference, O’Brien showed Nittany Nation what he is all about. He was intense, passionate, confident in his abilities yet sincere. Up until Saturday morning, O’Brien was not a member of the Penn State family; yet by the time noon rolled around, he was the first representative from Penn State in the past two months to speak on what Joe Paterno has meant and has accomplished at the school. His first mission as head coach was to retain popular assistant Larry Johnson and he did just that. He fielded all questions from the local and national media and answered them honestly and smoothly. He also managed to put ultra-arrogant and bleach blonde attention seeker Cory Giger in his place which is always a bonus.
We don’t know how Bill O’Brien will do in his tenure at Penn State, but he certainly deserves a chance. Bill O’Brien had nothing to do with any of the negativity that has gone on here in the past two months, and nothing to do with the decisions that were made at Penn State. He is simply a young guy who has worked his way up the coaching ranks and now has the big break he’s waited for his entire career. Our support is necessary for him to succeed. The support of the former players is necessary for him to succeed. This situation cannot turn into what happened at Michigan when Rich Rodriguez was hired. As we all saw there, a house divided will not stand.
The good news is that after the initial wave of anger, most of Nittany Nation seems to have gotten behind the new head coach. We here are no different.
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