Penn State football leaving the past behind quickly

The massive fallout from the incomprehensibly awful Sandusky scandal will resonate throughout 2012 at Penn State. Just don't expect it to impact the football program very much anymore, despite what commentators are saying

"The dark cloud hovering over Penn State football," the announcer said.

"The team will continue to have to deal with huge distractions next season," the other announcer said.

This was Saturday, in the aftermath of the PSU spring game. Lots of major college football programs had spring games Saturday, so ESPN gathered whichever college football announcers weren't on a Caribbean vacation or watching Barcelona-Real Madrid to provide a few token comments on the culmination of spring football.

When the topic shifted to Penn State, they instantly cited a hovering "dark cloud" and "huge distractions."

Which begs this response: What rock have these guys been hiding under the past few months?

Penn State football under dynamic new Head Coach Bill O'Brien is sprinting away from the scandal like Usain Bolt and into a brand new era, clouds and distractions shrinking in the rearview mirror.

Penn State, on the other hand, will have to deal with the relentless repercussions throughout this year - the Sandusky trial, the controversy over the Board of Trustees' code of silence, the release of completed investigations, etc. And it will be a very big deal as it unfolds.

But Penn State football? It's moving on, thank you very much, as it has demonstrated the past several months.

Fearless NFL Draft projections for Penn State

The Nittany Lions figure to have a big impact in the NFL Draft ... maybe

A gaudy 10 Penn State players, or more, possibly could be drafted next week.

Or as few as two. That's how many Nittany Lions are on the draft bubble - about a dozen, which might be the most in the nation.

As many as 14 to 16 Penn Staters could receive NFL training camp invites. Perhaps 12 or 13 conceivably could get drafted, Yet it would be surprising if more than seven actually did get picked, and most likely it will be about five or so.

But who will those "five or so" draftees be?

Penn State football's first spring without Joe Paterno ...

... is Bill O'Brien's first opportunity to actually coach the Nittany Lions. There are plenty of key things PSU fans should look for during the next month

Here we go.

The Penn State football team will practice today, and Joe Paterno will not be there.

Paterno will not be calling the shots in Happy Valley for the first time in 46 years.

This is going to take some getting used to.

Bill O'Brien begins coaching Penn State football today, on the first day of spring practice. Which is as much of a milestone in the monumental transition from the Joe Paterno epoch as any, at least until the real games arrive in the fall.

It is the next phase of the beckoning O'Brien era, and it is a big phase. We'll have a much better feel for what PSU football will look like under O'Brien in a few weeks, when spring football is complete (the spring game is April 21), than we do now.

Spring practice is about establishing the program's identity: What the team will look like and play like when it takes the field in the fall. We know it will be different, but how?

Here are some of the most interesting and important items to look for in the next month:

Penn State football recruiting: Back with a vengeance

Apparently, Penn State will not be trampled by Urban Meyer, et al, in recruiting, as new coach Bill O'Brien and staff start luring big-time commitments and alleviating the deepest fears of PSU fandom


Sorry, Ohio State.

And Wisconsin. And Maryland. And Rutgers.

And anyone else who thought Penn State was yesterday's football program. On a serious downswing. Ripe to be plucked.

Guess what? Bill O'Brien's Penn State Nittany Lions are not taking a step back. Not one inch. At least in regard to perhaps the most critical area for a big-time college football program:

Recruiting.

Philadelphia Magazine shamelessly butchers Joe Paterno

The national media hyper-reactivity onslaught from the Sandusky scandal has subsided, and we've moved into a new phase of coverage - though, sadly, it still has some shameful "journalism" 

You're a journalist. You're working on a big story about a Big Story, a feature piece that you have lots of time - weeks, months - to source and research.

You approach it from a certain perspective, with premises to prove, theories to support, ideas to direct and notions to develop.

Or perhaps disprove, and unsupport, and re-direct, and re-develop. The story - and your path to a finished, cohesive product - doesn't always take you where you expect to go.

In fact it commonly leads in some unexpected directions, because of unexpected information.

So while you start from somewhere with a "story idea" - newspaper and magazine writers/editors brainstorm story ideas all the time - your only real direction is toward the truth and the actual story: where the information leads, where the facts take you.

Unless of course you are Philadelphia Magazine and writer Robert Huber, and you're writing a feature about Joe Paterno and the Sandusky scandal.

The first 6 weeks of Bill O'Brien at Penn State: Almost Perfect

Bill O'Brien is hitting all the right notes as he leaves the Patriots behind and his tenure at Penn State shifts into full-steam-ahead mode

Look! There's Bill O'Brien at PSU men's and women's basketball games!

And there he is establishing a 5:30am football team winter workout with the media invited! (Yes, 5:30am! Yes, media!)

Now he's talking to a core group of THON representatives! Now he's addressing the entire audience at THON! Keep moving - now he's speaking to the crowd at the PSU-Pitt wrestling match, with another standing ovation!

Another day in Happy Valley, another slew of activities chronicled for the most ubiquitous man on campus.

O'Brien, strangely, mostly wasn't around for his first month as Penn State head coach, as he remained New England's offensive coordinator through the NFL playoffs. It was what it was - bad for PSU football for the short term, probably irrelevant for the long term.

In the two weeks since settling into University Park full-time, O'Brien seems to be everywhere - with the media in tow, monitoring it all.

And making an impressive impression at every stop.

The transparency is not only refreshing, but critical.

Fearless forecast for Penn State's exceptional 2012 recruiting class

Unpredictable variables make it fruitless projecting which PSU recruits will succeed, but we'll take a stab anyway based on their video highlights - though this 2012 class is exceptional regardless of how it performs on the field for the Lions


At the bottom of this post is what this blog has ascertained, just from the video available on Rivals.com, about the 19 PSU football signees last week.


The recruiting experts say this is an ordinary Big Ten recruiting class and below typical Penn State standards, ranked somewhere between 39-50th nationally.


The blame for that of course is the Sandusky scandal and perhaps also the long delay - nearly two months - in naming Joe Paterno's replacement, Bill O'Brien. Also, O'Brien was only nominally involved in recruiting as he finished the season with the New England Patriots.


But this class is extraordinary and unique in one regard: They are all heading to Penn State when many others discarded PSU after the scandal. And for that - as well as for being new head coach O'Brien's first-ever recruits -  this might be the most welcome group of athletes in Penn State history.