This news was lost in the wash of the weekend, but Bill O'Brien finally named a quarterbacks coach prior to the big recruiting weekend. After Bill O'Brien was unable to pull George Godsey from New England's coaching staff (RIP, @DouchyGodsey), Charlie Fisher comes to Penn State following a short stint at MAC Miami. Prior to that, Fisher was at Vanderbilt for nine seasons. Here's his résumé, courtesy of Miami's official site:
Fisher spent the last nine seasons at Vanderbilt, serving as wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator. He also mentored the Commodores' running backs during the 2002 and 2003 seasons.
Before joining Vanderbilt, he served two years as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Temple and had a two-year stint tutoring North Carolina State receivers, including likely NFL Hall of Famer Torry Holt.
Fisher's background also includes a successful tenure as head coach at West Georgia from 1993-97. While there, he led the Division II Braves to a 36-17 overall record. He also served as an offensive coach at Lenoir-Rhyne (N.C.) College from 1985-90.
Despite his career taking him to the deep south, Fisher is a Pennsylvania native. In SEC circles, Fisher was known for his ability to recruit talent that was overlooked by goliaths such as Alabama and Auburn. He helped Jay Cutler become a first-round NFL draft pick, and also coached WR Torry Holt at North Carolina State. As the York Daily Record noted, his passing attack was ranked 14th nationally at Miami last year, despite the team winning only four games.
When Bill O'Brien brought in Craig Fitzgerald from South Carolina to take over Penn State's strength and conditioning program (making thousands of Gamecock fans very, very sad), it was a given that the S&C program would be massively overhauled.
Step One: clear PSU's weight room of nearly all former equipment to make room for Olympic-style free weights.
Step Two: 5:30 A.M. METAL.
Penn State's Predawn Workout (via mxbscout)
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE WARRIOR COMBAT DRILLS.
Afterward, Craig Fitzgerald was made available to the media, during which he was much more specific with his methods (and to his credit, vaguely complimentary to the previous S&C staff):
Just as he did so perfectly last offseason, Jim Delany and the Big Ten are at it again.
The concept of the Big Ten even entertaining playoff proposals seemed laughable as recently as two months ago. But in the wake of a low-rated BCS title game that satisfied few outside the Southeastern Conference footprint, the conference is ready to study and contribute ideas.
So what're the goodies that leaked to Teddy and the Tribune?
"...a Big Ten plan would remove the top four teams from the BCS bowl pool and have semifinal games played on the college campus of the higher seed. That would do away with the facade of "neutral" sites such as New Orleans, Miami and Pasadena, Calif..."
That's the big one, which is also drawing howls from those outside the Big Ten that the plan would [gasp!] favor the Big Ten. It's comical. But it's not unreasonable to say that it would favor the Big Ten, even though it would favor pretty much everyone outside the old Confederacy and Southern Cal. It's totally hysterical that we're hearing operatives from the SEC, Big XII and others act as if their conference bowl teams haven't had it made for 100 years now.
Over the last seven seasons, the Big Ten has played 21 bowls in the opposing team's home state. Compare that to the SEC, which has played a grand total of two bowl games in the opposing team's home state.
Keep that in mind while you read yet another article saying how the Big Ten is being selfish, yet simultaneously ignoring how absurdly weighted the bowl system is toward Southern/Texan/Californian teams.
Moving on.
Two more (and much more likely to happen) points to come out of the Tribune article:
Instituting a 7-win requirement for bowl eligibility. Well, duh. It's pathetic how diluted the bowl season has become now that we're forced to accept two 6-6 mid-majors having it out the weekend before Christmas. Granted, some 7-5 teams aren't much better. But at least it would prevent bowl teams that finish 6-8.
Moving the BCS Championship Game closer to New Years Day. Did I already say "duh"? Not only did I watch about 5 minutes of this year's monstrosity of a "title game," but I honestly can't say I would have been much more gung-ho about it even with different teams. It's because no one is thinking about college football after January 3rd or so. The 5th is pushing it enough. But a full 10 days after the traditional "big day" for bowl games? That's not going to sell.
Your thoughts?
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It feels like all I've done lately is depth chart stuff. But hey, for me it's fun. And today we're doing it in a somewhat different way... by using OMGSTARZ! to breakdown the roster and projected spring depth chart.
The internet has been mainstream for quite some time now. But most recruiting services/sites have not been, and weren't so quick to archive all their stuff old (like, for you youngsters, a time when we played CDs, recently discovered the joys of texting, and had no idea what a Tweet or Status Update was...) for easy reference. But as time passes, more stuff is thrown into the "Past Stuff..." dropdown menus, landing us in a fortunate situation here. I won't need to go back and dig too deeply for all the main recruiting sites' star ratings for Penn State signers the last few years.
Jumping right in, below the jump is the current (best guess) 2012 Penn State depth chart, with respective stars attached to each player...
Over the past few weeks, BSD has profiled all the new football coaching hires. Now it's time to wrap it all up.
We have a few holdovers from the Paterno staff, but mostly it's all new kids on the Happy Valley block. And that's a good thing, because for much of the last three years or so, enthusiasm wasn't Penn State's forte. From rumblings that only a fraction of the staff actually put in 100 percent effort on the recruiting trail, to Joe Paterno himself saying he wasn't as "into it" in 2010 as he probably should have been, things were sort of heading off a cliff. It was just taking its sweet-ass time getting to the ledge.
So in comes Bill "BOB" O'Brien and a fresh crop of nearly a dozen football minds. Some are old hats (relatively speaking, they're young guns compared to some on the previous PSU staff), while others are looking at their biggest coaching job ever. What are we seeing now? That funny word: Enthusiasm. It's frankly amazing that Penn State was able to keep much of the 2012 recruiting class in-tact, even with Larry Johnson, Sr. and Ron Vanderlinden desperately holding onto the threads. What's more exciting is that Penn State will get tens of millions of eyes on its new leader this upcoming Sunday, as O'Brien goes for the best recruiting tool around: A Super Bowl Championship Ring.
This post is mostly intended to tie up all the coaching profiles with a nice little bow, so I won't waste too much more of your time. We will absolutely have more on the coaching staff as the off-season progresses. For now, study up...
Football Strength and Conditioning (via GamecocksOnline)
Over the past decade, the Penn State fan base's favorite Internet punching bag after Jay Paterno has been the strength and conditioning program, led by long time Strength & Conditioning Coach John Thomas. The basis for the complaints was Thomas' HIT (High Intensity Training) program, which from what I've gathered (and I am no expert on strength training, mind you), placed an emphasis on lower weights and more reps. Many of the message boarders have considered this to be an outdated program, as more and more Division 1 programs have adopted the Olympic-style weight training methods and especially given how many seemed to think PSU's players had lost that ability to overpower opponents like they routinely did back in the 1990's and earlier.
When Bill O'Brien was initially hired, it was announced that Thomas would be staying on board. Naturally, this was cause for major disappointment in Message Board Land. However, in somewhat surprising fashion, it was announced that Thomas would not be returning and shortly thereafter, South Carolina's Craig Fitzgerald was named as Thomas' replacement. Naturally, this led to the rare unanimous rejoicing in Message Board Land.
Playing Experience: Fitzgerald was a three-year letterwinner on the University of Maryland's football team from 1994-96.
Coaching Experience: Fitzgerald started out as the first ever Director of Strength & Conditioning at The Catholic University of America, a position he held from 1997-99, before heading to Arizona State, where he served as a graduate assistant strength coach for six months. He followed his position with the Sun Devils with a trip back to his alma mater at Maryland to serve as Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach.
Penn Staters rejoice! The Nittany Lions finally have a special teams coach. John Butler has joined the Penn State staff to coach defensive backs and special teams. This is a position that has needed to be addressed for the past several years as Penn State fans have tired of the infamous "designated fair catcher". Butler is a local guy, growing up in Oreland (outside of Philadelphia) and attending La Salle High School, though he did not attend Penn State.
Playing Experience. Butler played football at the Division III school Catholic University, but had no NFL experience.
Coaching Experience. Most recently, Butler coached special teams and outside linebackers at the University of South Carolina. Prior to taking the job with the Gamecocks, Butler coached the same positions under Tim Brewster at Minnesota (along with Ted Roof). Butler has also worked at Harvard, Texas State, Midwestern State and Texas.
When Bill O'Brien announced during his first press conference that he was retaining Larry Johnson, I was sitting at my favorite watering hole and every Penn State fan in the place began spontaneously clapping like infants that just saw a big red ball bounce in front of them. We couldn't help ourselves it was a small nugget of good news in an otherwise pit of self loathing and despair. It got me thinking that maybe... just maybe BOB would also bring back Ron Vanderlinden.
When Vandy became Penn State's Linebacker coach way back in 2001 I was giddy because I loved the guy and knew he was a top-notch coach. When he turned down other coaching offers and chose to stay at PSU, I was downright ecstatic. Imagine how great I felt when, shortly after announcing LJ's return, O'Brien announced the retention of Vanderlinden.
In the world of Penn State football, it was complete for me. All the other coaching changes would come and go, but the two guys that I felt were the core of Penn State's great defenses in the last decade were still on board. Some semblance of normalcy had returned in a chaotic time.
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