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Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno and all of Penn State can rightly fuck off.


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21 hours ago, TXUT said:

It appears this Chinese manufacturing plant is still in business

image.thumb.jpeg.61b519950432c7681dc081c8f607d433.jpeg

Wonder if some at UT ever signed the check to pay for those masterpieces.

  • 1 year later...
Posted

Rachel Bachman: Penn State Had a Plan to Hire Its Next Football Coach. Then It All Crumbled.

Quote

In late September, Penn State football was riding high. It had the nation’s No. 3 ranked football team, one of the most successful coaches in school history and designs on winning its first national championship since 1986. Barely two months later, the Nittany Lions have plummeted into a hole so deep they can barely see daylight. 

The school fired coach James Franklin after collapsing to three straight defeats and crashing out of the top 25 with a loss to Northwestern on Oct. 11. And as a wild offseason coaching carousel careens towards its conclusion, Penn State is still desperately searching for a replacement.  This week, it finally appeared to have made its choice. Kalani Sitake, a 50-year-old Tongan-American who has led BYU to back-to-back 11-win seasons, emerged as the leading contender for the job.

That is, until Penn State suffered what may be its most humiliating defeat of the year. This one came to the CEO of a cookie company. When Jason McGowan, the chief executive of Crumbl Cookies and a BYU donor, discovered that Penn State wanted to hire away Sitake, he cooked up a plan to block the move and to keep the coach with the Cougars.

“Some people are not replaceable,” McGowan posted on social media on Monday. “Sounds like it is time for me to get off the sidelines and get to work.” Within 24 hours, Sitake had signed a long-term extension with BYU. In an interview, McGowan confirmed that he offered help in retaining Sitake, who reportedly got a hefty raise for sticking with the Cougars.

The school didn’t disclose details and McGowan declined to say exactly how much he might have given, noting that he’s one of many BYU boosters. One contribution that was easier to quantify was the impact of McGowan’s post on X. His post calling for BYU fans to share their love of the coach garnered 2.3 million views and spurred thousands of replies, including anecdotes, selfies and even kids’ drawings. 

Sitake teared up in his re-signing news conference, noting that his wife called the burst of online adoration a “love bomb.” “It’s hard to leave when you have something so special,” Sitake said, “and you have amazing people that support us.” For Penn State, losing a coach to a cookie magnate is a lot to chew on.

For decades, Penn State was considered one of the nation’s blueblood football jobs. It claims two national titles, both in the 1980s, and plays in the revenue-rich Big Ten. It has one of the world’s largest venues, 106,000-seat Beaver Stadium, which is undergoing a $700 million renovation. It’s the flagship program in Pennsylvania, a football-loving state of 13 million people.

But in the months since athletic director Pat Kraft launched a search for Franklin’s replacement, it is beginning to look as though the lure of coaching in Happy Valley might not be what it once was. In fact, Penn State has so far succeeded only in getting other coaches paid. Curt Cignetti, who has led Indiana to the best two-year stretch in program history, got a salary hike to $11.6 million four days after Franklin’s firing. 

Nebraska re-signed coach Matt Rhule — a former Penn State linebacker. James Madison coach Bob Chesney appears close to becoming the coach at UCLA. In some ways, this speaks to the new economics of college football, which have warped the sport’s longtime hierarchy.  For most of the past century, it would have been unthinkable for BYU’s coach to spurn a blueblood like Penn State, with all the in-built advantages it offered in recruiting.

But where past generations sold players on their tradition, the current one is far more transactional. The advent of player pay, the ability for those players to transfer at will, and skyrocketing coaches salaries now mean that having the right booster in your corner can be more valuable than decades of winning football. And finding the right level of support can keep a coach in place, no matter who wants to pull him away.

Penn State’s fumbled coaching search is now more than just a minor embarrassment. It’s actively hurting the team’s future roster. While the Nittany Lions search drags on, recruits who had once pledged to play for the program have sprinted for the exit. Penn State had just two signees committed as of Wednesday’s early signing day, which added up to a recruiting class ranked a disastrous No. 150 nationwide, behind the likes of Towson and McNeese.

The destination for at least 10 of the PSU recruits who left? Virginia Tech, which hired Franklin. As of Wednesday afternoon, the Hokies’ recruiting ranking had surged into the top 25. Keen-eyed college football fans noted the snack that was served at Virginia Tech’s signing day celebration: Crumbl Cookies.  “I had nothing to do with that,” McGowan said, “but I thought it was a little funny.”

 

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