Penn State Football: Once Coaching Search Ends, Quarterback Problem Remains

Before the 2011 football season was sabotaged by the worst scandal in the history in college athletics, before the Hall of Fame coach was fired by phone and everything changed forever, the story was a pair of quarterbacks.

Matt McGloin and Rob Bolden jockeyed for the starting position throughout winter workouts, spring practice, summer sessions and fall practice, finishing in a virtual tie by the start of the season and setting the stage for an in-game rotation that sometimes defied logic.

By the end of October, after Bolden was booed for simply walking toward the huddle in the middle of a snowstorm against Illinois, the competition was settled.

McGloin is expecting to be the starting quarterback Jan. 2 in the TicketCity Bowl. Doctors will have final say there. McGloin is recovering from a seizure and concussion-like symptoms from last Saturday’s locker room fight with teammate Curtis Drake. It’s why interim coach Tom Bradley has yet to name a starting quarterback against Houston.

The real uncertainty comes after the bowl. Bolden has a decision to make, and whoever the new coach is may not matter. Bolden, a sophomore, can stick with Penn State in 2012 and beyond, likely playing second fiddle to McGloin for another year, or he can move on to a program where two years of playing time is a sure thing. Bolden has not used his redshirt, so transferring to an FBS school wouldn’t cost him a year of eligibility.

Then there’s Paul Jones, another highly recruited high school quarterback who has said he intends to stay at Penn State and should be able to take advantage of the extra reps in bowl practices, provided his overall grade point average is above a 2.0. The scout-team quarterback who has never thrown a collegiate pass, Jones, a redshirt freshman, likely won’t see any game action against Houston.

“Paul’s been working hard academically, been doing a great job,” interim coach Tom Bradley said Monday at bowl media day. “I’m proud of him. I see him in here at night when I’m in here. He’s here all the time doing everything he can possibly do.”

His is a situation that has some early parallels to Daryll Clark’s career. Clark, who was the last Penn State quarterback to give the position any clarity, attended prep school after high school because his standardized test results did not meet national qualifying requirements.

Quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno assured his father, then-head coach Joe Paterno, that Clark could cut it academically. Clark sat behind Anthony Morelli for two years, was eased into the offense during the Alamo Bowl in 2007 and then led Penn State to a Rose Bowl berth the next year and wound up a two-time All-Big Ten quarterback.

But that was when the program was stable, its coaching staff and support staff in tact. Now, everything is in flux. The Jerry Sandusky child-sex-abuse scandal, fair or not, has created a perception that house must be cleaned, that that is necessary to completely turn the page on the darkest chapter in the 157-year history of the university.

McGloin is not going anywhere. He chose to walk-on at Penn State because it was big-time college football. Never could he have envisioned his narrative changing the way it has, going from virtual unknown to becoming the first-ever former walk-on to start at quarterback in the Joe Paterno era to becoming the voice of a team as it recovers and rebuilds.

Next season’s narrative is already foretold. It will be a story about a football coach who isn’t Joe Paterno.

But another familiar story arc will start to unfold involving the most important position on the field.