Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/233832
NEWS & NOTES Steve Manuel Oscar Wilde famously observed that there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. The point being that while celebrity can be irksome and inconvenient at times, it's also a measure of success. Bill O'Brien was being talked about quite a bit in mid-December, just as the annual wave of NFL coaching purges was about to get under way in earnest. The spate of rumors began with a report by Jason La Canfora of CBSSports.com on Dec. 15 claiming that O'Brien had been contacted by the Vikings and Texans and that he might emerge as a candidate for the Redskins job, too. Two days later, Sports Illustrated's Chris Burke tweeted that he "heard Bill O'Brien's name a lot at Ford Field last night" – a reference to the Detroit Lions, whose 18-16 loss to Baltimore the day before was their fourth in five games. Of those teams, only one – the Texans – A N A LYS I S had an actual coaching vacancy as of mid-December, but it doesn't take a lot of kindling to get a fire started. This was not unanticipated. It's one of the realities that Penn State accepted in January 2012 when it hired not just an NFL guy but an ascendant NFL guy. That's a big distinction. Over the years, many of the bestknown coaches who left the NFL for college football were simply looking for a soft place to land. Pete Carroll had gone 33-31 with the Jets and Patriots before taking over at USC. Nick Saban went 15-17 with the Dolphins and didn't inspire a bidding war when Alabama approached him about leaving South Florida to take over the Crimson Tide. Those two went on to enjoy great success at the college level, and Carroll par- layed his nine-year stint with the Trojans into an NFL do-over. His Seahawks were the class of the NFC during the 2013 regular season, making it easy to forget that he'd had a middling career as a head coach before landing at USC in 2001. O'Brien's departure was nothing like those. When he said goodbye to his colleagues in the NFL, he left them wanting more. He was on his way up when he agreed to become Penn State's head coach, and reports that the Jacksonville Jaguars were interested in him was one of the more reassuring parts of a biography that Nittany Lion fans didn't know very well prior to his hiring. A year ago, O'Brien called a news conference to rebut speculation that he was headed back to the NFL. There had been reports that he had heard from the Eagles, Browns and Chargers, but at a Jan. 7 presser, he reaffirmed his desire to coach the Nittany Lions in 2013.