Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/155994
harlie Fisher has been coaching for more than three decades. He's worked at nine colleges and has served in just about every capacity on offense, from graduate assistant to passing game coordinator. Fisher has coached in the Deep South. He has coached in the Midwest. He has coached in the Northeast. He has coached in big cities. He has coached in small towns. His is a rather extensive resume. So when Fisher tells you that he's facing an unfamiliar situation at Penn State this season, your attention is immediately piqued. There are things that this guy, with all his experience, hasn't seen before? Apparently so. This year, the Nittany Lions are staging a quarterback competition that is entirely devoid of experienced quarterbacks. The two players who have been auditioning for the starting job – true freshman Christian Tim Owen Hackenberg and juco transfer Tyler Ferguson – have not taken a snap in a Football Bowl Subdivision game. Same goes for the run-on players behind them on the depth chart: true freshmen D.J. Crook, Austin Whipple and Jack Seymour. All three backups have come to University Park in the past eight months. There's no longtime backup lurking in the lower rungs of the depth chart, no veteran shoulder to lean on. The situation is so unique that Fisher had to stop and think for a moment when he was asked at Penn State's media day a few weeks ago whether he had ever been confronted with a scenario in which none of the players at a particular position had played in a major-college game. "Probably at Vanderbilt, with some of the receivers I had," he said, recalling his seven-year stint as the assistant coach in charge of the Commodores' wideouts. "At quarterback? I can't really say that's been the case for me before. "But," he quickly added, "my job is to coach them and work hard and prepare them. And their job is to come out and work hard every day. That's how we'll approach it, and we'll see how it goes." So far, it's been going pretty well. Both Fisher and head coach Bill O'Brien said they were pleased with what they saw at the start of preseason practice. O'Brien said that Ferguson was slightly ahead of Hackenberg after the first few days of camp, a result, most likely,