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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 6, 2013Bill O'BrienTHE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. (No microphone.) COACH O'BRIEN: We feel really positive about this class for many reasons. When I was hired here, the first thing we did after we met with our football team last year that was here at Penn State was we began to delve right into recruiting. What we want here eventually is definitely a smart team, a high‑character team, a big, fast, physical football team that can play in all kinds of weather. I think we've done that with this recruiting class. Now, what we did, not me, with the rules the way they are right now, the head coaches can only see these kids once off campus. You have to give a ton of credit to our coaching staff. We have a great staff of recruiters and coaches and teachers and family guys, then Billy Kavanaugh who did a great job of organizing it all, a really sharp guy. You have to give those guys a lot of credit. What we did was we found guys that came from good families that were smart guys that we think are tough guys that we know are going to come here and go to class and be good in the community. Time will tell about obviously how good they all end up being. You never really know until they actually start playing for you. We're excited about this class. Sanction‑wise, certainly we lost some kids because of sanctions. There's no question about it. I'm not going to sit up here and tell you that the sanctions didn't play a factor in some of the guys that we set out to recruit. But at the end of the day all, I'm concerned about are the guys that are here. What we talk about as a staff all the time is we're not about collecting talent, we're about building a team. I think it's important to understand that we feel like we've done a good job of starting to build a football team for the future here with the kids that signed with us today and the five that were already here in January and then with our run‑on program, which we feel is going really well for us right now. Q. Bill, there's no playbook for how to react to sanctions recruiting‑wise. How did you shift strategy and that sort of thing after that hit? I would have to imagine you had to refocus? COACH O'BRIEN: The strategy definitely changed. I mean, the one thing that is important is that you go from thinking about 85 scholarships, signing 25 guys in a year, and then when the sanctions come out you immediately have to become a mathematician and figure out how, number one, you're going to get to 65 by September 1st of 2014, which is what we have to do; number two, you have to think about we can only sign 15 scholarship players; and number three, how much more important, even though at that time it was very important to us, but how much more important the run‑on program becomes for us. That was a series of lengthy meetings with our staff, with myself, Billy Kavanaugh, Jimmy Bernhardt, who is my righthand man here, discussing strategies, needs, all the things that go into a 65‑scholarship roster and signing 15 guys. So the strategies definitely changed and I feel like we've got a lot of bright guys here in this building, a lot of guys smarter than me that had some good ideas. The strategies will constantly be evolving, but we feel really good about how our strategy worked at it relates to today. Q. What in particular did you like about Christian Hackenberg? What do you think he brings as a quarterback? COACH O'BRIEN: Number one is, he's a really good person. We feel really good about our quarterback room right now. It's young. It's a young quarterback room. Whoever plays quarterback for us next year, whoever takes the field in the Syracuse game will basically be playing college football for the first time. Steven got a few snaps this year against Virginia, but for all intents and purposes, the quarterback that plays for us next year will be somewhat of a rookie quarterback. When you look at our room right now, we feel like we have competitive guys, smart guys, guys that come from good families, guys that are going to work hard in the classroom, and Christian fits right in there. He's a tall guy, accurate arm, strong arm, he's smart, and we feel good. Again, the jump from high school to college to the pros, those are big jumps. He's making the jump from high school to college, that's a big jump. The system that we run here at Penn State is not the simplest system in the world to learn for a quarterback. He's going to have to really begin to study and understand what it takes to play quarterback at this level, which we've talked about a lot in the recruiting process. The same can be said of Tyler and Steven. When you play quarterback at Penn State, that's very, very different than any other position on the team. When you play quarterback at Penn State, you have to really learn how to balance the classroom with being the best‑prepared quarterback you can be, working in the weight room, studying the playbook, studying the game plan, your opponent, then obviously going to class, which is number one, and will always be number one at Penn State. We think Christian is a guy that's going to come in here and do all those things and we feel really good about our room at that position. Q. A follow‑up to Christian. Do you anticipate him being a guy that will be able to fight for the starting job as a freshman? Do you maybe not have the luxury of redshirting many of these kids because of some of the effects of the sanctions? COACH O'BRIEN: I will say this about the quarterback position. Those guys, Christian, Steven Bench, Tyler Ferguson, any one of those guys could be our starting quarterback against Syracuse, no question about it. Don't expect me to really name a starting quarterback at the end of spring practice. I might, but I might not. Understand that. Now, as far as redshirting and things like that, that's hard to say. You look at it, and the one thing that you have to do is you've got to do a great job of evaluating these guys every single day, starting with spring practice with the five newcomers that are here, and training camp with the other 12 added to the mix. If these guys are ready to play, as a coaching staff we make the decision to play these guys, involving the parents in that decision, talking about the freshmen. When we play them, we have to play them. If you decide to play a guy as a freshman, you only end up playing him the first two games, a total of 10 plays, that's not very smart as a coaching staff. If we believe that any of these guys are ready to play as true freshmen, we have to get them prepared to play and we have to play them. We have to live with rookie mistakes and we also have to do a great job of guiding them and teaching them and staying with them. That's how it goes. There's a lot that goes into that redshirt decision. You can't make it right now. Q. You and your staff have discussed previously about, because of the limited scholarships you're giving out, you can't miss with guys, you have to be real careful. How did that manifest or change in the way that you've approached recruiting over the last year? COACH O'BRIEN: You're right. You're right. It's almost impossible to say this, to do this, but you really can't miss when you can only sign 15 scholarship players. We feel really good about where we're at. But, again, only time will tell. That's when it becomes vitally important to, number one, be as thorough as you possibly can be in recruiting, as thorough as you can be within the rules of recruiting, you've got to do a great job of, so to speak, leaving no stone unturned. The next deal that becomes really, really important is the run‑on program. We feel really good about that run‑on program. I think overall, this is a great day for Penn State. People may look at me and say, Why do you say that? We're in the middle of sanctions, all these things. Well, this is a great day for Penn State because it proves a number of things for Penn State. We signed a number of kids that committed to us early and stayed committed to us, stayed committed to us when they could have gone elsewhere. That's really a great day for Penn State. That says a lot about Penn State, not any one coach or anything, but a lot about Penn State. Number two is, we found with our run‑on program there are many guys out there, mostly Pennsylvania guys, but even some other guys from other states, that have grown up dreaming about playing at Penn State that have fantastic opportunities to go to other schools, fantastic schools, but they've chosen to come to Penn State because of Penn State. They have a chance to sit in this team meeting room. They have a chance to lift in that weight room, which is the best weight room in the country. We have a chance to be coached by an excellent coaching staff. They have a chance to play football in front of 100,000 fans. Most importantly, they have a chance to receive an incredible degree, an incredible college degree. So that says a lot about the tradition, the history of Penn State. The foundation that Coach Paterno started here and kept here for 50 years, we're trying to keep that going. What it said to me today is this is a very good day for Penn State because of what it says about the university. Q. The guys who stated committed to you. Can you talk about back in July, a couple days after the sanctions, a group of guys came in here publicly and committed to you. How important was that for you? COACH O'BRIEN: It was really important. That was an interesting day. When the sanctions came out, we had really good relationships with these families. Just like all coaches that are recruiting at these schools, you develop relationships with these families. It was neat getting to know their families, being in their hometowns, their homes. What happened in July was we had these really good relationships with these kids that committed to us. They called and they were upset. They were upset because the Penn State that they had committed to changed relative to the sanctions. They all got in their cars and they drove here to State College and they sat right in this room. It was a very private meeting, a very emotional meeting. I stood right here and I answered probably 50 to 75 questions as best that I could. If I didn't know the answer, I just told them, Look, I don't know the answer to that, I'll find out the answer as fast as I can. I think it was important that our whole staff was in here, too, and were able to meet with the families. I think that was an important day for us at Penn State and the football program because it was an honest, somewhat emotional, tough, but very productive meeting. Q. Generally speaking with the message and strategy of recruiting run‑ons, how much does it differ with recruiting the scholarship athletes? Is there a big difference? COACH O'BRIEN: There is in the rules. There's definitely a difference in the rules. I'm not going to get into all the specifics of can you call them, how you contact them, how they contact you, things like that. But as far as once those contacts are made, there's really not a lot of difference. You're talking about the same things that you talk to a scholarship about. You're talking about education, being able to choose from so many different majors here. Once again, I say this all the time, you get sick of me saying this, I have these guys in my office that are currently on our football team, I'm just amazed at the diversity of all the majors on our football team. That's a huge selling point. You're going to be able to have a passion for playing football and for what you want to study. So we talk to all of the guys that we're talking about Penn State to, we talk about the same things. It doesn't differ based on scholarship or no scholarship. Then obviously the chance to develop as a player, the chance to play in front of great fans, play in a program filled with history and tradition, it's the same thing you talked about to all these different guys. Q. How many run‑ons are you looking to add to this class? Are there any walk‑ons from this past season who will be on scholarship this upcoming season? COACH O'BRIEN: We're only allowed to bring 105 to training camp. Right now we have about 90 guys in the program. Then you had the 12 scholarship guys that will join us in June for the summer bridge program, you're talking about 102 guys. We'll try to add between 13 and 15 guys. There's guys that may end up leaving the program, things like that. I'm talking about walk‑ons. That's basically how we'll handle that. I don't know right now the exact total. But it's anywhere from 15 to 20 guys that will be here when the training camp starts. Q. (Question regarding walk‑ons.) COACH O'BRIEN: Off the top of my head, I know that Matt Lehman will be on scholarship, Ryan Keiser is on scholarship, then anybody else that I'm not remembering I'll get that to you. Those are two that I know. Q. A lot of fans, people in the business, look at Mahon, Breneman, Sickles, Hackenberg as the core of your class. There were three other guys you offered early. How important were they? What do you like about those guys? Where do they rank on your recruiting board? COACH O'BRIEN: It is true that the storyline out there for a while was we had this core group of guys. To me they were all important. When I look at this list of guys, there's not one guy that I look at and I say, Wow, that guy is a lot more important than the other guy. That is no way to build a team. Within the walls of this football building, all these guys were extremely important to our football program and to our university, to our athletic department, because they committed to us during what a lot of people think is a tough time for Penn State. We don't see it that way. We can't wait to play the season next year. We can't wait to play in future years with 65 scholarships. Life is about challenges. As it relates to those guys that you asked me about, again, Andrew Nelson is a guy that we met early on, offered a scholarship to early on, really thought very highly of this guy, like a high‑character guy, good student, great family, and a Pennsylvania guy. We think he's going to be a heck of a player. Now, I'm probably putting some pressure on him to come in here and do that. He's big, tall, rangy, he can bend, he's tough. He's Penn State offensive lineman. Zayd was a guy we evaluated on tape early on, as a student, and we felt right away that this is a guy that can be Penn State linebacker. That's saying a lot because we know the history here, the best in the history of college football. We feel really good about Zayd, his athletic ability, his ability to come in here and play for us. Then Curtis Cothran, we felt another Pennsylvania guy that comes from a great family, down there in the Philadelphia area, Council Rock North. We were really excited about the fact that we like this guy on tape. He's played very productively. He's a good guy. When you go to the school, you would observe these guys, that's another way to tell. You go into the school, you look at Curtis, he's walking down the middle of the hallway, he's like the Pied Piper. The teachers love him, everybody is high‑fiving him. You can say this about all these guys we recruited. That's something I noticed going into all these guys' schools. We feel he has tremendous upside for us. Q. You brought in three guys from the south. Talk a little bit about what they bring to the class and do you envision yourself continuing to recruit in the deep south and other regions of the country. COACH O'BRIEN: We'll continue to recruit in the deep south, in the south, because we have connections down there. I coached at Georgia Tech for eight seasons. Mac McWhorter, his roots are down there. We'll continue to recruit down there. The bulk of that roster will come from that 300‑mile driving distance, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Baltimore, D.C. New York. We have to do a better job in Ohio, then New England. We'll still get into the south. When we went down there and watched these guys play, we got to know their families, again, they come from really good families. They're high‑character guys, they're tough guys. All three of these goods, Gaines, Cothran, Robinson, we think are going to be really good football players for us. So we're excited about having them onboard. That gives us a pretty good, diverse mix of guys when you look at the geography of our roster. We have a decent number of guys from the south on our roster, the bulk of the guys are from the northeast. That's the way it should be. We'll continue to recruit down there. We're excited about those three guys. Q. You lost Ted Roof, who everybody knows down south. How does that change? Where are you at in replacing him on the staff? COACH O'BRIEN: Obviously Ted did a great job for us this year. That's what happens in coaching. Guys have decisions to make that are the decisions that involve their families. He went to Georgia Tech. He's in the Georgia Tech Hall of Fame. That's where he met Ted. His wife is from Peach Tree City, he's from Lawrenceville. They're going back home, and that's good. He has a great presence in the south, a fantastic recruiter. But we're still be in there. Charles London from Dunwoody, Georgia. Mac is from Atlanta. Played at Georgia. So we still have some guys in the south. I'm in the process of filling that position on our staff. That will probably be something that gets filled over the next week or so. Q. In addition to recruiting these freshmen coming in, you were also continuing to keep your current team together. Was there a lot of meetings? Is that an ongoing process? Can you speak to the significance of going into spring practice with your former team? COACH O'BRIEN: You're talking about the fact that they can still transfer up till August of 2013? Q. Yes. COACH O'BRIEN: Thanks for bringing that up, appreciate it (laughter). We feel really good about our football team right now. I think the guys that are here right now, having gone through last year, they know us a little better. They know the things that we expect out of them. They understand the systems on offense and defense and special teams. They love the weight room. They understand how academics works here as far as the support system. We feel good about where we are with them. Nothing has changed about the honesty we have with them, the relationships we have with them. Nothing has changed. We all understand what the rules are. We're playing by the rules as far as the sanctions that the NCAA laid down on us. We don't spend every waking minute, just like we didn't really last year, talking about staying. We really don't do that that much. We say right now, Hey, you guys are Penn State football players and we can't wait to coach you in the spring. But we're very mindful of it. We just continue to coach them on a day‑to‑day basis. Q. Are you over that bridge with a lot of those guys that are still here? COACH O'BRIEN: That's what I'm saying, I believe we are. I believe we are. We're very mindful of the situation that we're still in. Q. The NCAA recently passed a rule that kind of gives more coaches unfettered access to contacts recruits in August. How is that going to change your 2014 approach? Reading between the lines, is that what you meant last month when you said you're looking to add recruiting personnel? COACH O'BRIEN: That's part of it, no question. The rules are changing. Basically they're not changing, they're removing a lot of rules. Less regulations. Less regulatory methods. It will change a lot. We're in the process of looking at that right now. Every day we spend part of the day on recruiting, how are we going to handle unlimited text messaging, unlimited visits to schools, whatever it may be. We're never going to join the ranks of the wild, wild west, I can promise you that. We're going to do things the right way at Penn State and still try to go out there and try to find Penn State guys. We want tough guys, smart guys, high‑character guys. So that's not going to change. Maybe some of the ways we go about doing it have to change because of the less rules. Q. (No microphone.) COACH O'BRIEN: I'm just a rookie head coach. I don't know. That's probably for somebody else to answer than me. Again, I'm just all about in recruiting, our staff, we're about finding the right fit. Once we find the right fit, developing the relationship where the parents and the prospect, we all feel like we're on the same page as to where we can take this young man when he gets here, academically, socially, obviously football‑wise. Whether that's good for college football or not, I don't know. I just really want to see how good we can do at Penn State. Q. Penn State has a pretty rich history with legacy commits, fathers, brothers. Is that something you're going to keep stressing in the future? COACH O'BRIEN: I don't think there's any question that that's important here. We've got such a strong lettermen organization, a lot of these guys that have these teenage sons that are good athletes, good players. They have good genes. They have a passion for Penn State because they've grown up watching how much it meant to their dads. A lot of them, both parents went to Penn State, which is pretty neat, too. There's no question. Obviously, they have to be able to play and they have to be good students, but that's something we'll definitely continue to look at, no question about it. Q. How much time has it taken you to learn the rules with the run‑ons given it's such a different situation? Do you expect any of them to enroll this summer for the bridge program considering they'll pay for it? COACH O'BRIEN: Some of them will enroll. I'm not sure how many right now. I'm sure some of them will. I look at the rules every day. If I have something on my desk that I completely don't understand whether we can do this or not, I turn around, I have the NCAA rule book, here is my desk, a credenza behind my desk, with a rule book that thick. I pull it out and I go to the page that is appropriate for what I'm looking at. I figure out the rule. That's kind of the way it goes. So, yeah, every day is a learning experience when it comes to the rules of just overall recruiting for me. Q. You talked last summer about balancing the roster out a bit. How do you feel you were able to address that with this class and can you talk about what you were able to do on the defensive side of the ball with this class? COACH O'BRIEN: We basically signed eight offensive players and nine defensive players. You have the five that are here now, the 12 that signed today, so eight on offense, nine on defense. We feel like with the restrictions, with the sanctions there, only being able to sign 15, we feel like we balanced it pretty well. At the end of the day, do we wish there were a couple positions where we could get some more guys? Of course. But we can't because of our restrictions. We feel like we balanced it very well offensively and defensively. It's a well‑balanced class when you look at the linemen versus the skill players. We just wanted to recruit guys, like I said, that we knew fit our program and our style of play, and we feel like we did that. Q. Going back to that meeting in July, do you know or can you estimate how many kids were there? Of the ones that were there, how many stayed committed? COACH O'BRIEN: I'm counting. Give me a second, man (laughter). I want to say there were ‑ don't hold me to this ‑ eight guys there, and I want to say seven of the eight stayed committed. Don't ask me about who didn't. You can figure that out. I'm sure you got sources you can figure that out. One guy said he was coming and then decided to go somewhere else. Q. This was your first full year as a head coach. You've been assistant before. How was your role different compared to your assistants? Was there anything you feel you improved upon going throughout the year? You mentioned you were a rookie. How was the year in general? COACH O'BRIEN: It was totally different than being an assistant coach, totally different. So I was basically trying to improve every time I went out, whether it was the message in the home, the message at the high school, whatever it might be. I think at the end of the day all I ever try to do is be myself and be honest with people and with their families. With all due respect, I don't ask them how their girlfriends are doing, when the prom is, all that. I don't really care about that. This is how I see your academic future, this is how I see your football future. This is what you're going to be required to do in many ways off the field community‑wise here at Penn State. I tell them we're looking for good, tough guys that are smart, that are going to keep their noses clean off the field and go to class. As the days went on, hopefully that message was delivered better by me. But it's totally different than being an assistant on the road. Q. Do you follow the recruiting rankings at all? COACH O'BRIEN: No. I really don't. That's a fair question. I respect them. I respect the people that do that. Those people that do that, some of them are my friends. I've known a guy named Jamie Newberg for 20 years, since I was at Georgia Tech. Some of those guys are my friends and I respect what they do. At the end of the day, that has nothing to do with how I look at a student‑athlete, a prospective student‑athlete. I look at a prospective student‑athlete with our staff and I say, Look, this is what we need, okay? So how does this guy fit what we need? What does he do well? What are his weaknesses? How is he going to fit in with our locker room? How is he going to do in stats his freshman year? How is he going to do working in the community for us, because he's going to have to do a lot of that? How does he fit? This is a different place. I'm not saying we're up here. I'm not saying that, don't get me wrong. Penn State is a very unique, special place to play college football. I don't care about stars, rankings. Somebody came running into the office this morning and said, Hey, we're the fourth ranked team in the Big Ten in recruiting. Like, Who cares? Who is one, two and three? I don't know. I just know I feel good about the players we have in this class. Q. Are there any players in this class that weren't recruited as heavily as others that you think could be a 'sleeper'? COACH O'BRIEN: You know, again, I think that's a great question. I'll say the answer is yes, but I'm not going to get into who those guys are. I would say the answer is definitely yes. I always go back to my last year in New England. We went to a Super Bowl with a roster filled with guys that probably didn't have five stars. Let's think about it. Rob Gronkowski probably had five stars. Aaron Hernandez probably had five stars. Welker didn't have five stars. Danny Woodhead didn't have five stars. We had a right guard for many years in New England named Steve Neal, many people didn't hear of him because he wrestled. He wrestled in college, then played pro football. What I'm saying is, when we go out and do our system of recruiting, we try to find guys that fit our program. That's what we did. There's probably guys on that list that weren't as highly recruited that we think are going to be good players. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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