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.
Kudos admitting you went overboard. I suggest pulling the RIP article from your site. We Are!
Noticed this phrase: “sacrifice the golden goose.”
Ya think, when it comes time to solicit funds they’ll find out they have to crawl back on their hands and knees for JoePa’s good will?
Can’t wait to see that.
You guys are not claiming to be great writers, good, but you guys did react way too emotionally and irresponsibly for me to ever click on this site again after today.
I’m back on board with your site. Thanks for admitting you were off base.
Good artilcle. I have no idea why anyone at PSU speaks with the Harrisburg Patriot, ESPN, or any CBS or Comcast Philly. Did anyone hear that jerk from ESPN, Mark Swartz, ask Coach O’Brien if he could assure prospective recruits parents that their children would be safe at PSU. I don’t know how he kept from belting him in the mouth. I would have answered “as safe as they are in the halls of ESPN.” Then again in the halls of ESPN they might not be too safe.
ESPN’s take on PSU is always slanted. Why? Is it because it’s “good news” or is it an attempt to keep the dogs away from their role in the Bernie Fine Scandal? Mark May questions if parents want Bill O’Brien yelling at their kids…. Please. Everyone knows he will go out of his way to say something negative about PSU and has done so since he played ball at Pitt.
Glad to hear you’ve decided to retract. I second the suggestion above to remove the RIP article. None of us were born Penn Staters (or as BOB put it in his press conference “Penn State Men”), we earned it through our actions, our passion and our love of Penn State. BOB deserves the chance to do the same thing.
Too little too late. The commenters who have called this a troll site are absolutely right. This site is pointless, sad, and filled with nothing but negativity. Never coming here again.
So let me get this straight. This site writes a bunch of articles that people love and it’s the best thing since sliced bread. They write an article that people don’t agree with and people say it’s garbage and they are never coming to it again. I don’t have a dog in the fight, but some of you, like John and Stewart, are a bunch of nancies. I doubt the people that write for this site care if you come here or not.
I only came to this site for the first time two days ago because it was mentioned in a CDT article. I have never said this site was great or that I loved it. In fact all my comments here have been about how disappointed I am in the tone and content of the posts so I have no idea what your comment is even in reference to. I have read several of the recent posts and decided, in my opinion, there is nothing of value here. I’m not sure why that makes me a ‘nancy’ and frankly didn’t realize people were still using that as an insult. Good one Jake. It’s funny that people use BS qualifiers like ‘I don’t have a dog in this fight’ and then proceed to prove that to be completely false by entering the ‘fight.’ And thank you for making my point for me in regard to this sight being full of negativity. I thought we were having a discussion, turns out we are actually having a fight. Thanks for the clarification. Also, if the people that run this site don’t care if I come here why do you?
So let me get this straight. In your first post you say you will never come here again and the 14 hours later you make another post on this site? Truly a man of your word.
We have indeed pulled the article down. Not everyone will always agree with our articles, that has never been our intention. However, we felt in the spirit of moving forward, removing the article was for the best. For those that read and enjoy the site, thank you. For those that disagree with it and choose not to come back, that is ok ae well.
Damn, I thoiught I left some good comments there.
Laschout staff is 2 articles too late. I stopped following you on tweeter and probably will not read any articles on this website you are all not different from a Penn State student blogging about PSU football from his dorm…( amateurs )
You should have left the RIP article up. Have some conviction for your opinions. Not everyone is going to agree with what you write, but if you wrote it, you obviously felt that way.
We’ll find out soon enough if PSU football as we know it is dead. In the meantime, I will continue to send my normal PSU donations to RAINN, until I see that additional, satisfactory changes are made in now the BOT runs the university.
+1
Appreciate the feedback and pulling article has never, nor will ever be the norm for us. We have always put forth opinion articles in the sense that they are exactly that, opinions. People can agree or disagree and that is fine. The article pulled is a little different in that it was written at an emotional time and doesn’t clearly convey our stance. We want to support Coach O’Brien and his new staff and the article doesn’t help, so we pulled it. Thanks for reading and your support.
Leave it up! Show the conviction that the BOT did not. Its okay to get behing OB without forgetting the debacle in leadership that caused this mess.
Good job in taking responsibility for a mistake and trying to make things right. No one was happy about how everything went down. Having said that, no one really knows why things maybe had to go down that way. What they got in the end, however, is a coach who made it so that I haven’t been this excited about Penn state football since before the dark years of the aery 2000′s. Let’s all put aside our differences and once again make PennState football the dominant power we all want it to return to be,along with doing everything the right way- success with honor once again.
He really impressed me by what he said about Joe and by retaining Larry which you mentioned in your article and by one other thing you didn’t–talking to the Big 33 coaches.
When O’Brien and PSU beats either Michigan, Wisconsin or Ohio State all will be well.