Penn State's surprising and controversial hiring of New England Patriots offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Bill O'Brien as its head coach is a story with two distinctly different sides.
Despite Penn State's not formally announcing that O'Brien had been hired, Patriots owner Robert Kraft confirmed it.
"Billy is a very high quality guy, he's got integrity. He's honest, and I'm sad to see him go," Kraft told the Boston Herald yesterday, "but I think they've chosen wisely."
O'Brien reportedly is to be introduced at 11:30 a.m. today at a news conference at the Nittany Lion Inn in State College. The news conference doesn't figure to be the obligatory love-in that many such events turn into.
Depending upon one's point of view, the glass could be considered half-full, and maybe more than that. After all, O'Brien, 42, is in charge of the NFL's third-highest-scoring offense, which averages 32.1 points per game, and the Patriots are the AFC's top-seeded team going into the playoffs.
"He's been a great coach and a great friend," Patriots Hall of Fame-bound quarterback Tom Brady told reporters last Sunday after O'Brien's name surfaced as a prime candidate to fill the job held by Joe Paterno for 46 years.
"We have a great relationship, probably a very unique relationship in that we communicate all the time. I always enjoy working with him, and he's done an incredible job with this team and this offense."
But before you start measuring the Nittany Lions' holdover quarterbacks, Matt McGloin and Rob Bolden, for Big Ten championship rings now that they'll receive instruction from the great Brady's most recent guru, consider the tsunami of negativity after it became evident that Penn State's six-member search committee would go outside the program to replace Paterno, who was fired in November in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal.
It had been presumed for years - heck, decades - that whenever Paterno stepped aside, his position would be filled by one of the long-tenured loyalists on his staff. Or at least by someone with deep Penn State ties and unwavering devotion to the Paternoesque value system in place since JoePa succeeded Rip Engle as coach in 1966.
A vast majority of current players, and many of more distant vintage, wanted interim coach Tom Bradley - for 33 years a trusted Paterno assistant, and for 4 years before that one of his players - to stay on. But although Bradley was granted what now must be considered two courtesy interviews, it was apparent almost from the start of the 45-day process that acting athletic director Dave Joyner and other committee members preferred an outsider who would tear down the Temple of Joe and start over.
Which is why so many members of the Football Lettermen's Club, which was formed in 1980, consider the glass not to be merely half-empty, but nearly drained. One of Penn State's all-time great linebackers, LaVar Arrington, now a drive-time sports-talk radio host in the Washington area, told BlueWhiteIllustrated.com he would put all of his college memorabilia in storage and become a fan of whichever school hires Bradley.
"I'm done with Penn State," Arrington told the website. "If they're done with us, I'm done with them."
Brandon Short, another star linebacker who is now an investment counselor in New York, said that when he and other members of the Lettermen's Club sought to arrange a meeting with Joyner, they were rebuffed by an "arrogant, nonchalant and egotistical attitude to anyone who approached him. It shows me he wasn't concerned about getting our point of view. Dave Joyner is not qualified to be an athletic director."
Former PSU linebacker Shane Conlan told the Allentown Morning Call: "Brandon Short does not speak for the majority of former players. He's gone off the deep end."
One criticism of O'Brien could be his lack of head-coaching experience. He has coached 14 years in college, at his alma mater Brown, Georgia Tech, Maryland and Duke, and has coached 5 years with the Patriots.
Mix the yeas and the nays and obviously O'Brien - who certainly looks the part of a leader with his Kirk Douglas-like cleft chin and fiery sideline demeanor - will have to win over a large segment of his own fan base before he can hope to win big at the conference and national levels. And while Paterno, with his two national championships, five undefeated seasons and 23 top-10 finishes, was so esteemed he could ride out some rough patches, O'Brien likely won't be afforded the same luxury.
Taking more of a wait-and-see attitude is Carolina Panthers linebacker Dan Connor, the 2007 Chuck Bednarik Award winner and Strath Haven High grad who thinks O'Brien deserves the opportunity to prove whether he has the right stuff to get the job done.
"He's done an unbelievable job with the Patriots' offense," Connor said. "It's hard to say now that he isn't a good choice.
"I can understand some of them [in the Lettermen's Club] being emotional. A lot of them are close to coach Bradley and were definitely pulling for him. But you have to support your school, too.
"Joe always talked about the 'next guy up.' He said if somebody goes down, the next guy has to be ready to take his place because the team goes on. I think this is a similar situation. I think Joe would be the first person to say that.
"If the next guy up is Bill O'Brien, let's see what he can do. No one player, no one coach, should be bigger than the program or the coach."
O'Brien could face a bit of a juggling act. He will stay with the Patriots until they are eliminated from the playoffs, while also trying to recruit for Penn State - a potentially formidable task, because national signing day is Feb. 1 and the Super Bowl is Feb. 5.
Send email to fernanb@phillynews.com