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Penn State made a gutsy move yesterday by hiring Patriots Offensive Coordinator Billy O’Brien to take the reins and hopefully move the closed tunneled visioned football program into a new era.

Penn State is a bit of a closed society and was under the thumb of Joe Paterno who hired Penn State guys  for his program over the years.  Penn State needed to take the embattled football program in a new direction and as much as this didn’t sit well with a lot of Penn State insiders, alumni, and students. It’s the right move to bring in a guy with no connections. O’Brien brings both NFL and NCAA experience into what probably right now is the toughest job in college sports.

The hiring of O’Brien is the first step in rebuilding and restoring, the name of Penn State Football. They  have a lot of public relations work to do .to get recruits even to consider that program. Hopefully, bringing in the guy who coached Tom Brady is a lure, which will perhaps neutralize the mess that Sandusky cast upon the program and the school.

As far as O’Brien goes he has more guts than the people who hired him. Let’s face it he is an outsider replacing a beloved legend. If the Sandusky thing didn’t break the legend would still be there. This guy is walking into a mess . I’m sure there were other candidates but O’Brien had to wow them. O’Brien has  afew things on his recent resume’ that is he currently works for one of the better run franchises in all of sports and that’s from the top down to the beer vendors. He learned from belichick whether like Belichick or not the guy prepares coaches and players and gets the best out of them. Then there is Tom Brady  who O’Brien isn’t afraid to get in his face either. How many assistants are going to get into a mega star’s face.

Only time will tell if O’Brien is the right choice to clean that program and turn it around. The way I see it even if he fails epicly  it won’t be held against him for future Head Coaching jobs.  He will be none as the guy who had enough guts to try to fix a mess. In College Park he may always be the outsider but perhaps they need to look outside the box for a new beginning and it’s starts with this hiring.