Thank you BOB, Hack, and Breneman

[africamurphy]

As I watched PSU players sprinkled liberally across NFL highlights this past weekend (and watched Dotson, a future day 2 NFL selection and NFL starter, at Beaver Stadium on Saturday)...I keep going back to Dave Joyner's decision to nab Bill O'Brien. And BOB's ability to land 5-star Hackenberg and Breneman. That literally began a new era of PSU offenses.

Let's look at PSU receivers/tight ends in the NFL the 15 years before BOB. Bryant Johnson was serviceable for a few years in the NFL. The three Smurfs made NFL rosters for a couple of years but never caught on. I don't remember a TE who started in the NFL during that stretch.

That hire...and Hack and Breneman's decision to anchor PSU's recruiting in 2012...meant huge dividends for PSU's offensive perception nationally going forward. I doubt there'd be a Godwin and Hamler and Jesse James and Gesicki if not for those guys.

And let's not forget, elite RBs like to play with other elite skill position players too...so Barkley, Sanders, and our current RB room also might be part of the "2012 offense" wake...

 

[PearlSUJam]

As I watched PSU players sprinkled liberally across NFL highlights this past weekend (and watched Dotson, a future day 2 NFL selection and NFL starter, at Beaver Stadium on Saturday)...I keep going back to Dave Joyner's decision to nab Bill O'Brien. And BOB's ability to land 5-star Hackenberg and Breneman. That literally began a new era of PSU offenses.

Let's look at PSU receivers/tight ends in the NFL the 15 years before BOB. Bryant Johnson was serviceable for a few years in the NFL. The three Smurfs made NFL rosters for a couple of years but never caught on. I don't remember a TE who started in the NFL during that stretch.

That hire...and Hack and Breneman's decision to anchor PSU's recruiting in 2012...meant huge dividends for PSU's offensive perception nationally going forward. I doubt there'd be a Godwin and Hamler and Jesse James and Gesicki if not for those guys.

And let's not forget, elite RBs like to play with other elite skill position players too...so Barkley, Sanders, and our current RB room also might be part of the "2012 offense" wake...

"Joyner unceremoniously and opaquely fired the best college fencing coach in the country over what was ostensibly a small ball of tape and a big misunderstanding. While not all of the details are public, Joyner and the university have done nothing to counter the story that Emmanuil Kaidanov was fired because he yelled at one of his assistants over the reporting of what turned out to be a non-incident involving drugs that didn’t exist. Kaidanov is now suing the university, and his son is not holding back any punches against Joyner or the athletic department.

Joyner released a statement after his boss signed the NCAA consent decree saying, in part, “ agree that the culture at Penn State must change,” which is of course total bullshit. And Joyner knows it is total bullshit, even if he’s too proud to admit it. When the university needed leaders to stand up for its culture — and there was no better ambassador than Joyner, as a former two-sport athlete and distinguished alumnus who stayed involved with the university — all we got was this wimpy statement that helped irreparably shape the national narrative that Penn State harbors a bunch of demented child-abuse sympathizers.

Joyner pissed off Penn State’s most beloved student-athlete to the point that he felt compelled to go on-the-record for a book about how much he hated the guy only months after graduation. I don’t really care if Joyner gave Michael Mauti a dirty look for drinking a beer on an airplane, but there’s little doubt — both from John Bacon’s book and conversations I’ve had on background with various players — that Joyner had very little respect from the team for his perceived unwillingness to stand up for them in the face of the sanctions, or his reported egocentrism at the TicketCity Bowl meeting. While players don’t need to like you to be an effective AD, it’s certainly alarming when the de fact0 face of the university in Mauti doesn’t respect you.

Whether you believe the theories that Joyner had a personal vendetta against former team physician Wayne Sebastianelli or not, there’s no doubt that there is at least some shred of truth in Sports Illustrated’s hatchet job from last May about the team’s ill-equipped medical program and Joyner’s role in forcing out the ubiquitously respected Sebastianelli.

Joyner’s ascent into the athletic director role was textbook cronyism. He had no prior athletic administration experience and was essentially appointed to a $400,000 job by his friends who he worked with on the Board for more than a decade. While this speaks to the greater problem of corruption in the Board of Trustees that has existed for decades, I’m not willing to criticize Joyner for taking something offered to him. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t do the same.

Joyner voted to fire Joe Paterno without any sort of due process or the dignity that a man like Paterno deserved. This has little to do with Joyner’s tenure as athletic director, but it’s likely the reason for most of his critics, whether they’ll admit it or not. For many alumni, this is a decision of no return, save for an Al Clemens-style mea culpa. Joyner was a captain and All-American on Paterno’s 1971 team; as a product of the “Grand Experiment,” it’s a fair argument to make that Joyner had an even greater responsibility to stick up for his old coach than other less athletically gifted trustees. Unfortunately, for this reason alone, Joyner was doomed from the start with the most vocal sect of the alumni base."

The Complicated Legacy of David Joyner

At today's Penn State where so many of our leaders fall into a robotic, impersonal -- yes, heartless -- abyss, honorable intent is at least a start. If nothing else, David Joyner had that.

onwardstate.com

 

[RGWhirly]

Joyner was a clown and stooge that did not deserve to be AD.