Blue White Illustrated

July 2020

Penn State Sports Magazine

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O F F - S E A S O N R E P O R T part of his job to the teaching part. Said Scott, "Seventeen- and 18-year-olds, at that age, can solve all the problems in the world. So I decided to get out of teach- ing." Thus began Scott's long rise up the coaching career ladder. His climb fol- lowed a familiar pattern: small schools to big schools, with a stop in the NFL along the way. His first step was a call to Pry, who by then was serving as defensive coordina- tor at Louisiana-Lafayette and brought him aboard as a graduate assistant. Pry left in 2007 for Memphis. But in 2010, after a few other stops, including a three-year stint on the coaching staff at his alma mater, Scott found himself re- united with Pry, this time Georgia Southern. A=er just one season together, the two coaches once again went their separate ways. Pry took a job on Franklin's new sta< at Vanderbilt, while Scott le= in 2013 to become defensive line coach at Texas Tech. In the years that followed, Scott coached at football's highest levels, spending two seasons with the New York Jets before returning to the college game as defensive line coach at Arkansas and South Carolina. He's never coached in the Big Ten, but Scott said he's always regarded it, along with the Southeastern Conference, as college football's highest echelon. "I'm excited to coach in the Big Ten," he said. "I've always felt like the Big Ten was one of the best two leagues in the country. In my opinion, I felt like it was the Big Ten and the SEC. When you look at the teams that come out of those leagues, and the grind that it is week to week, I'm super excited. … You see a lot of young men get- ting dra=ed out of this league. When I coached for the Jets, we had quite a few guys from the Big Ten and SEC. That seemed to be where most of our players came from, those two conferences. So I couldn't be more excited to be in a con- ference like this and be on a great team like Penn State. "I'm looking forward to doing every- thing I can to help this great university and help our football team win as many games as we can and win a Big Ten cham- pionship and higher," Scott added. "I'm looking to be a good piece to that. They have a great foundation here [and] I'm ex- cited about what we can do. I'm excited about going to di

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