“You can print this: You can print that I don’t really give a —- what the ‘Paterno people’ think about what I do with this program”
Bill O’Brien’s goal in his two years as Penn State head coach was never about winning – or rather, it was about more than winning. He was brought in for the bigger, symbolic picture. Bill O’Brien wasn’t a Penn State guy, and he never would be. He was there to re-lay the groundwork of a Penn State football team coming off NCAA sanctions that almost ended the program.
College football teams are surrounded by myths – it’s the lore of the “good old days” when coaches were the face of communities, and players were students first, athletes second (the jury is still out on whether this was actually ever the case, and these stories are used as distraction from the bigger issue of players not getting paid). O’Brien’s job was to cut through this Penn State football myth; his impact was going to be measured outside of wins and losses. Regardless, in two seasons, his record was:
2012 record: 8 wins, 4 losses; Big Ten and National Coach of the Year
2013 record: 7 wins, 5 losses
There’s no doubt O’Brien overachieved on the field (he was also down 20 scholarships, making his record more impressive). But it’s those back rooms, behind heavy wood doors, where the power of a football programs is ultimately decided. Some play it well – see his predecessor Joe Paterno, who parlayed the boardroom into not only 45 years of coaching, but also calling his own shots on retirement.
O’Brien could never, or never planned to, break into the circle known as Joebots. But O’Brien succeeded for the same reason Penn State succeeded for hiring him: he was an outsider who only stayed two seasons. That wasn’t enough time to become part of the establishment. The man who gets written into the folklore of Happy Valley? That’s for Penn State’s next head coach.
On the purely X’s and O’s “What is Coaching?” debate, one side says Phil Jackson won titles because he coached Jordan, Pippen, Shaq and Kobe (“I could win a title with that roster”, I said, in between sips of Coors Light). Then, there’s the other side of coaching up average players and overachieving – you know, REAL coaching, the mid-90’s Rawkus backpacker underground coaching (Brad Stevens at Butler was Mos Def). But what about a coach tasked with symbolically restarting the most controversial program in college football?
I’m hard pressed to think of a situation more difficult than what O’Brien faced taking over at Penn State in 2012. Sure, coaches have inherited worse rosters and bad owners, but a scandal that big? O’Brien was just pushing the boulder up the endless hill, over and over again, battling opponents, sanctions, perception, and Joebots. But you don’t need to win National Titles to be a successful coach. And in college football, unlike Greek mythology, sanctions don’t last forever (they eventually got reduced). The two lessons from the Bill O’Brien Era: first, you can’t change 45 years of office bureaucracy in two seasons. And second, if all else fails, move to Texas.
The Texas Archetype
Before Bill O’Brien was named head coach of the Houston Texans, there was Josh McDaniels. And before McDaniels, Charlie Weiss. And Romeo Crennel, and Scott Pioli. That’s the cast of Bill Belichick’s New England Intellectuals who dared to go on their own. Their record as head coach, and Pioli as GM of the Chiefs is below:
Romeo Crennel: 28 wins, 55 losses
Charlie Weiss: 4 wins, 20 losses
Josh McDaniels: 11 wins, 17 losses
Scott Pioli: 23 wins, 41 losses
That’s a combined 101 wins and 160 losses. If that’s a coaching tree, it got left behind on the Christmas lot years ago.
But O’Brien feels different from his predecessors – first off, he has a winning record. And as a fellow New Englander, he most resembles the Belichickian ideal: a stoic, straight shooters who cut his football teeth toiling away in Northeast backwater fields, who get respect because know the game and they aren’t afraid to tell it how it is. He and Belichick played high school football at boarding schools in Massachusetts (O’Brien at St. John’s Prep, Belichick at Andover). They both played college football at New England liberal arts schools (O’Brien to Brown, Belichick to Wesleyan). I mean, Bill O’Brien got put on by yelling at Tom Brady on national TV. It was the greatest story John Irving never wrote.
Bill O’Brien’s myth is already taking shape, with quotes like “O’Brien is a self-made coach leading a broken team” (also see: this column). Where better for an outsider to become a legend by leading a band of merry men than in Texas – after all, that’s the plot to every John Wayne movie, Spaghetti Western, and No Country for Old Men, right? And this time around, our protagonist might let himself stay long enough in one place to become one.
