Blue White Illustrated

aybe by the time you read this, Penn State will have named the successor to Dave Joyner, who is set to step down as athletics di- rector on Aug. 1. Then again, maybe not. The news re- lease announcing the formation of a screening committee contained an email address to which interested can- didates can submit their resume. I didn't check to see if the job was also posted on Craigslist, but it does seem safe to say that school officials are cast- ing a wide net. In years past, it was never hard to fig- ure out who was on the short list for this position on the rare occasions when it came open. The serious candidates tended to fall into one of two categories: 1. Close confidants of Joe Paterno. 2. Joe Paterno. But times have changed, and so has the unwritten rule that asserts the best person for any important job in Penn State's athletics department is a Penn Stater. The administrators who have aroused the most speculation in recent weeks have had few if any ties to the university. They've included LSU's Joe Alleva, North Carolina State's Debbie Yow and Northwestern's Jim Phillips. The notion that Penn State had be- come too insular was a major theme of the Freeh report, with former FBI direc- tor Louis Freeh asserting as one of his recommendations that the university needed to "conduct national searches for key positions, including head coach- es and associate athletic directors and above." A decade or two earlier, that charge would likely have struck a nerve. There was a time when Penn State's idea of a wide net was one that ex- tended from Atherton Street all the way to Porter Road. But by 2012, when the report was re- leased, the university was routinely going national. Cael Sanderson had come to University Park from Iowa State, Patrick Chambers from Boston Univer- sity, Coquese Washington from Notre Dame, Bob Warming from Creighton, Jeff Tambroni from Cornell and Guy Gadowsky from Princeton. Of its 24 current head coaches, only five are Penn State graduates: Josh Brandwene (women's ice hockey), Randy Jepson (men's gymnastics), Char Morett (field hockey), Mark Pavlik (men's volleyball) and Denise St. Pierre (women's golf). Likewise, several of its recent admin- istrative hires have come from other schools. Athletics Integrity Officer Julie Del Giorno was previously at Moravian College, while Senior Woman Adminis- trator Charmelle Green was from Notre Dame. Tom McGrath, the university's new associate athletic director for busi- ness relations and communications, worked for the University of Colorado and the Boston Celtics before arriving in University Park. The exception, of course, is Joyner, a former Penn State football player and wrestler who moved straight from the board of trustees to the athletic admin- istration. At the time Joyner took over – November 2011 – the Sandusky scandal was generating ghastly headlines on a daily basis, and TV news trucks were Search and replace Penn State seeks a new kind of athletics director Patrick Mansell J U D G M E N T C A L L M OPEN MIC Joyner discuss- es the NCAA's sanctions against Penn State during a student town hall gathering at the HUB in Sep- tember 2012.

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