Blue White Illustrated

T H E M O N T H I N . . . These kids are doing the best they can. It's just not good enough. Penn State's talent is exactly what I thought it would be entering this season. It's a 4-4 Big Ten team that can beat the second division but not the first. People need to see what the sanctions have done and how long it will take to fix the damage. How great was John Donovan's culpability? Debatable. A lousy offensive line is like a rusted bridge. Until you have the material to rebuild it, you can't just blow it up. And until then, negotiating it is a tenuous process. Unfortunately, he was the man deemed responsible for a structure that was built and damaged and neg- lected long before he arrived. So, he was fired. But that's the way the world works today. DAVID JONES PENNLIVE.COM Penn State will be facing its fourth interim head coach in 2015 [in the TaxSlayer Bowl] – the four-out-of-13 mark (31%) perhaps some sort of record for facing op- ponents in flux due to preseason firings (Illinois), mid-season suspensions (Rut- gers), mid-season firings (Maryland) and post-regular-season firings (Georgia, to be coached by assistant head coach Bryan McClendon, also the team's recruiting coordinator and receivers coach). Penn State's nose isn't totally clean here, how- ever, having announced the firing of offensive coordinator John Donovan 16 hours after the close of its regular season. MIKE POORMAN STATECOLLEGE.COM It's no longer Miami coach Mark Richt's sendoff game, but it probably is Christian Hackenberg's. Penn State's quarterback would gladly eschew the traditional bowl gift for some protection and an open receiver. STEWART MANDEL FOXSPORTS.COM In the end, Penn State came out on top. Watching [women's soccer coach Erica] Walsh finally getting a national title after years of coming so close was spectacu- lar. Watching the veterans who lost to North Carolina [in 2012] celebrate a cham- pionship was spectacular. And watching a team that will bring back eight starters in 2016 can only leave fans with one question: what's going to happen next year? BILL DiFILIPPO PENNSTATERMAG.COM O P I N I O N S ADMINISTRATION Barbour ranks among most influential women Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour is listed just outside the top 10 in a recent Forbes survey ranking of the most powerful women in sports. In her second year directing the Nit- tany Lions' 31-sport program, Barbour is No. 11 in the Forbes listing of the Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Sports. She is among four women listed who primarily work in intercollegiate athletics and is also the highest-ranked athletic director and the No. 2 woman in college sports. Condoleezza Rice, Serena and Venus Williams, Billie Jean King, Danica Patrick, Val Ackerman, Debbie Yow, Jeanie Buss, Becky Hammon and Maria Sharapova are among the women who joined Barbour on the list. Barbour took charge at Penn State in August 2014 and has since overseen an athletic program that supports approxi- mately 800 student-athletes and a sta; of nearly 300. During the past year, she has begun to implement her vision for Penn State. In March she announced a reorganization of Intercollegiate Athletics that intro- duced a more vertical structure to en- courage communication and collabora- tion across business units and sports. Four administrative divisions were formed: business and :nance; student- athlete performance, health and wel- fare; internal and external operation; and administration. ■ received first-team All-America honors from CBS Sports and was a second- team honoree by USA Today. Before the national awards were hand- ed out, Nassib was named the Big Ten's Nagurski-Woodson Defensive Player of the Year and also earned first-team All- Big Ten honors from both the coaches and media. He is the sixth Nittany Lion to take home Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year accolades since 1998.

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