Not all NCAA sanctions against Penn State were created equally.
Some – like Wednesday’s signing of a truncated recruiting class – come and go. Others, like Penn State vacating 112 victories, not only last a lifetime, but they eliminate part of one as well.
As it is, Bill O’Brien and Penn State football crossed a big football-related sanction off their to-do — and to-don’t — list this week.
It is just one of many on-the-field penalties levied by the NCAA. But with it, O’Brien & Co. weathered the first storm of four consecutive 15-scholarship signing dates quite well, thank you. And who said storm, anyway? Not O’Brien, who put a sunny face on it all. And for good reason. He earned it.
“This is a great day for Penn State because it proves a number of things for Penn State,” O’Brien said on Wednesday. “…What it said to me today is that this is a very good day for Penn State because of what it says about the university.”
With O’Brien leading the way, Penn State bravely continued its unsteady occupation of the new world called Sanction City, Pa., population: 600,000 alumni, 44,000 University Park students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 102 scholarship and walk-on football players, 10 football coaches and myriad Penn State football and athletic department employees.
Not to make light. O’Brien is right. Wednesday was a success. Each hurdle can be a victory, as each sanction is faced, strategized against and somehow managed around. Yes, Hackenberg and Breneman are symbols of that. But so was a host of other Penn State football news that filtered out midweek: a new assistant coach was hired, a hole in the schedule filled, a 65-member press corps that covered signing day.
Business as usual, as much as possible. (Save for the media invite: That didn’t happen until O’Brien hit campus.)
It is a new normalcy, but one that is normal only in the way of the wartime bombings of London — if you excuse the extreme analogy. Fifty-seven days later, the Brits never surrendered. As O’Brien hastened to point out: Penn State is still here, in many ways as great as ever. Now, as in the past, it is a football coach who is the voice of Penn State, trumpeting its virtues on the football field and all across campus.
On Wednesday, O’Brien buttressed the Nittany Nation when he spoke to the media, knowing he was also speaking to future recruits and their parents and fans and students and alumni as well. Penn State has “the best weight room in the country,” he said. “…We know the (linebacker) history here, the best in the history of college football,” he added. And Penn State football players have “a chance to receive an incredible college degree,” he concluded.
O’Brien – much like Joe Paterno– has laser-like focus. In deed: His gaze is disconcertingly penetrating, his countenance stern and his bullshit-detector lacking an off switch. And in word: Recruiting coordinator and running backs coach Charles London, who worked with O’Brien at Duke, says with a grin: “I’ve known him for a long time and he’s always gotten his point across to me.”
Class of 2017 signed? Check. Now, on to the next thing.
No apologies. O’Brien, a former Patriot, is like that other big-muscled guy with little hair, a sailor whose mantra was, “I Yam What I Yam.”
It is highly unlikely there is a singular sanctions to-do list sitting on O’Brien’s desk inside his second-floor Lasch Building office. Things are too intertwined for that. Thirty such lists are more like it. Besides, some sanctions will last literally for years. So, discerning an exact end of many on-the-field related sanctions is too complicated.
Still, there are benchmarks along the way. And Wednesday was one of them. There have been four so far, and O’Brien – and all of Penn State, especially the players – have handled each with measured urgency, aplomb and with success, measured in many forms and fashions.
For Penn State football, the 200 days since July 23 – a mere 10 percent of the chronological journey — have somehow been better than they had a right to be. Still, there are 1,787 more days until the end of the 2017 calendar year, when the penalties ostensibly end. Of course, the effects of the NCAA sanctions will be felt beyond that, as it will be a year or two or three until the full complement of 85 scholarships is once again filled.
By then, it is conceivable that the scope of college football will be changed forever. The Ed O’Bannon antitrust case against the NCAA — with players past, present and future suing the NCAA for using their likenesses for financial gain – could very likely end in a profit-sharing arrangement of sorts. And then there’s the growth of mega-conferences and their attendant television channels.
But, for Penn State football and O’Brien there are now four sanctions gone with at least 12 big ones to go. Again, many do not have a definitive check-off date, but their challenges are no less tangible.
Even though there is some poetry in the way O’Brien methodically addressees each challenge, this is no Robert Frost-road less taken. This is the road that has never been traveled – and is being built, brick by brick. To wit:
FOUR DOWN…
1. Players transferred prior to summer drills 2012, or could stay at Penn State and keep their scholarships but not play football
2. Players departed during the 2012 season without penalty
3. No postseason play, 2012
4. First 15-scholarship recruiting class, 2013
…AND TWELVE TO GO
2013
1. Players may transfer without penalty until summer drills in August
2. No postseason play
2014
3. Second 15-scholarship recruiting class
4. 65 scholarships / first limited roster
5. No postseason play
2015
6. Third 15-scholarship recruiting class
7. 65 scholarships / second limited roster
8. No postseason play
2016
9. Fourth 15-scholarship recruiting class
10. 65 scholarships / third limited roster
2017
11. 65 scholarships / fourth limited roster
2018
12. 85 scholarships allowable, but unlikely – 28 maximum scholarships awarded in February 2018; there would have to be 12 redshirts of 17 2013 signees for Penn State to reach maximum (12 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 28 = 85)
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O’Brien Continues to Coach at a Breakneck Pace, Jan. 27, 2013
