To hear Joyner tell it, Penn State has arms wide enough to embrace the occasional convert. And when the man who headed the six-member search committee charged with identifying the best fit as the Nittany Lions' new football coach peeled back a few layers of a candidate with no obvious ties to the school or Paterno, he thought he spotted something that superseded even a lack of an insider's blueblooded pedigree.
"I was looking for a Penn State heart," Joyner said, and he believes he found it beating in the chest of someone who hadn't played football for the Lions, coached under Paterno, or even set foot on this picturesque, central Pennyslvania campus until Friday night, when he was offered and accepted a job that many Penn Staters believe should have been reserved for one of their own.
Bill O'Brien, 42, offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the New England Patriots, was introduced Saturday morning at the Nittany Lion Inn as the first full-time coach of a program that had been entrusted to Paterno since 1966, or 3 years before O'Brien was born. And while no one in the packed room heckled him, it is safe to say that the reception was mixed, at best.
How many media types in the audience already had editorialized that O'Brien lacked the gravitas (he has never been a head coach at any level) to take on one of America's highest-profile college coaching jobs? How many members of the Football Lettermen's Club had criticized the hiring of someone they felt couldn't possibly understand what being a Penn Stater is all about? Why couldn't Joyner and the other members of the Gang of Six just stay in-house and promote interim coach Tom Bradley, a Penn State alum with 33 years of service as one of JoePa's most loyal and trusted lieutenants?
Source: http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/bernard_fernandez/20120109_Bernard_Fernandez_.html
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