Bill O’Brien, despite having achieved lots of previous success as a college football head coach, will only coach in his very first bowl game this year. The first year Boston College head coach will lead the Eagles into Yankee Stadium later this month to take on Nebraska in the Pinstripe Bowl.
He never made a bowl at Penn State (where he went 15-9, 10-6 in the Big Ten over two seasons) because they were on probation due to the Joe Paterno-Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. O’Brien is certainly a fascinating and intriguing figure for taking that job in 2012, when many coaches wouldn’t, due to the very challenging circumstances at the time.
“I’ve never been to a bowl game as a head coach,” Bill O’Brien said yesterday on the Pinstripe Bowl media teleconference. “I’ve been to several bowl games, but not as a head coach. When I was at Penn State, we were on double secret probation, we couldn’t go to a bowl.”
While I appreciate a good Dean Vernon Wormer in Animal House reference as much, if not more, than the next man, the comment seems a little flippant. It seems a little dismissive of the serious sex crimes that were committed in Happy Valley before Bill O’Brien got there.
While the NCAA sanctions imposed on Penn State in 2012 seemed strong, at the time, they were not unprecedented. This despite Jerry Sandusky being an unprecedented monster.
The “Death Penalty,” which was imposed on Southern Methodist in the 1980s, would have been more than just for Penn State, as that was, literally, a serial child rapist and an institution systemically covering it up for decades.
For these crimes, and the cover-up that followed, PSU was hit with a postseason ban for four years; which was later reduced to only two, and by the time it was, O’Brien was already gone.
Penn State was also hit with a loss of 40 scholarships, a fine from the NCAA of $60 million, vacated victories from 1998 to 2011 (no one cares about vacated victories, this is not an actual punishment, it makes no difference whatsoever), and an additional fine of $13 million from the Big Ten Conference.
But again these sanctions were reduced.
While the phrase “double secret probation” is funny, and he meant it as a joke, there was nothing funny about the PSU scandal.
O’Brien, whose career has seen him spend time as Offensive Coordinator for the biggest dynasty of both the college (Alabama) and NFL (Patriots) ranks, added the following during the call:
“To be able to go to a bowl now and play an opponent like Nebraska, I think that was the big thing for us. Can we play a great legendary program? When we found out it was Nebraska, we were all very excited about the opportunity to go up against a program like that in Yankee Stadium around Christmastime. I mean, it’s a very, very cool opportunity.”
The former Houston Texans Head Coach, and later GM, was a very reasonable and logical man, in a very unreasonable and illogical environment during his time in State College. His immediate predecessor there, Tom Bradley, signed a petition trying to redeem O’Brien’s “real” predecessor, Joe Paterno.
He was right to get out of there as soon as he could.
“When you go into a job like this, you always have to expect the unexpected, regardless of what has happened in the last year,” O’Brien said at 2013 Big Ten Media Day.
“A lot of the things that we talked about last year, when I was here, it’s water under the bridge. We’re in a situation at Penn State right now that is unprecedented, sure. But at the same time, we’re thankful for our players. The rules are what they are. And that’s what we play under,” he continued.
Obviously, B.O.B. had nothing to do with what went on at PSU but in the grand scheme of things, what the punishment the school received was just a slap on the wrist. Bill O’Brien was just a bit off in his remarks here.
However, we do wish him the best in the Pinstripe Bowl. We do wish him luck against Penn State alum Matt Rhule and his Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and RG. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.