Penn State Football Coach Bill O’Brien: Good Hire or Bad Hire

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The million dollar question for all Penn State fans has to be the impact we will see on the football field with the hiring of Coach Bill O'Brien.  I think most of us really have no idea what will be the result, but we of course are trying to remain optimistic about the future.

I think one area to examine this uncertainty is how well recent coaching hires at Penn State have performed.  And for the most part, I think most will be pleasantly surprised about how well those coaches are doing. 

So let's review Penn State's most recent hires and talk about how they have done:

• Erica Walsh, WSOC, 2007: Played on U17 national team, head coach at Harvard, head and assistant coach w/ U.S national teams.   Penn State has not lost a step since Walsh joined.  They had won 8 straight Big Ten titles as of when she joined and she has lead the team to 6 more championships since 2007.  They still cannot seem to cross the next hurdle, which is be a significant threat in the National Championship, but that was the case before she joined.

• Coquese Washington, WBB, 2007: Played at Notre Dame and in WNBA, assistant coach on ND national title team.  Penn State absolutely took a steep dip in competitiveness when Washington took over, but one can contribute that to the scenario under which she was hired.  The good news is she has successfully re-built the program, the Nittany Lions just won their first regular season Big Ten Championship.  With a fairly young team, it will be exciting to see if  you can maintain this success.

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• Cael Sanderson, WRST, 2009: Greatest amateur wrestler of all time, coach at alma mater Iowa State.  Sanderson is probably the most exciting recent hire, as he lead the team to a pretty surprising National Championship in the 2010-2011 season & Penn State is a heavy favorite to repeat this year.  And again, Sanderson has a pretty young team and continues to recruit extremely well.   I don't think any hirer can go better than how this one has turned out.

• Bob Warming, MSOC, 2010: Sixth winningest active coach in D1 soccer spent most of his career at Creighton.  Warming has only been the head coach for one season, but it was a very rough season.  The team went 9-9-4 and 0-6 in the Big Ten (worst season in recent memory).  Prior to Warming joining Penn State was a consistent contender for the conference championship but was never able to consistently win the league or go very far in the NCAA tournament.  It is too early to judge Warming at this point, but next year will be very important.

• Jeff Tambroni, MLAX, 2010: All-American player at Hobart, led Cornell to eight Ivy League titles in 10 seasons, made NCAA Final 4 in three of last four seasons.  Tambroni was a pretty exciting hire, as he came from a strong Cornell program.  In his first year at Penn State, the team went 7-7 and went to their first-ever CAA tournament.  While that type of record does not sound great, previous years were much worse, typically ending with more loses than wins.  This year, Penn State seems to have some momentum and excitement thus expectations are pretty high (currently ranked #20 in the country).  

• Missy Doherty, WLAX, 2010: Played on three NCAA title teams at Maryland, assistant coach on Princeton teams that won two NCAA titles, seven seasons as head coach at Towson.   In Doherty's first year, Penn State was ranked consistently in the mid-teens.  And made a run at the ALC Championship with Semifinal Loss to Northwestern.   This was an improvement over past years.

All in all, if you look at the hirer's above they all seem to be doing pretty well.  Some are winning national championships and some are not, but all are improving the programs they lead (with the exception of Men's Soccer, but let's see what year 2 is like).

I think many of us are very nervous about the hiring of O'Brien.  He does not have previous head coaching experience, he was absolutely not on anyone's radar list and bluntly he does not come with much glamour (like an Urban Meyer does).

But if  you look at what Penn State has done recently when it comes to hiring coaches, you have to be pretty impressed and thus potentially excited about O'Brien.

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