I don’t think that was a party.
Parties are enjoyable.
It also wasn’t not enjoyable.
I laughed a lot this week. However, I also pulled my hair out a bit.
I also wasn’t incredibly productive either. The Christmas lights did get hung, though.
I don’t think a reality show is a fair comparison. Usually, they’re better produced than whatever that audio quality was.
I don’t know what that was – what Penn State collectively just experienced over the last 54 days and maybe more specifically the last six. But whatever it was, it’s almost over now. It’s time to start cleaning up. It’s time to walk into McLanahan’s, order a bacon and egg, no cheese, on an English muffin with salt and pepper to cure the hangover.
A wild week – and a wild period in Penn State football history – has pretty much come to an end, pending board approval.
My personal highlight of the week started somewhere around the time someone on the message boards – and I can’t remember which one it was because I’ve literally read thousands of posts this week – said that Penn State was going to announce Kalani Sitake at the Penn State basketball game because it was free to students.
I think it was a BYU fan and BYU fans may understand humility. But they do not understand both how funny it would be for Sitake to be announced at a Penn State basketball game and not a normal press conference — and how Sitake could have somehow gotten to State College even though it was widely reported he was in Provo all week.
And besides, it didn’t matter. Penn State left Provo without getting him to sign. The team meeting that was allegedly starting in minutes never happened and after that bizarre decision, it started to get really weird.
The CEO of a cookie store ended all hope of Sitake leaving BYU and Cougars fans, instead of shoving their victory in Penn State fans’ faces, donated more than $4,000 to the State College Food Bank because they felt bad?
As the message boards rolled in and Twitter accounts I had never heard of offered non-credible news, I hung to the words from names like “Brantt”, “JagdPanther” and “TurdFerguson.” They – beside the contingent of Penn State beat writers who did a very fine job of covering the process – seemed to know something. And I trust them far more than any prediction market (which should never be trusted).
As day 51 ticked to day 52, things started to take a tense turn. It – as one friend texted me – felt like we were watching a coup without actually knowing what’s going on. Sure, some of the funniest posts in Penn State internet history were produced but it got a little dicey for a bit.
Fingers were being pointed. There seemed to be some sort of standoff between the athletic director, the Board of Trustees and the people with money. Meanwhile, names like Brian Daboll – who has zero college head coaching experience – were floated as possibilities. Jeff Brohm decided he didn’t want to step into the fire. And Josh Heupel, well, that quote sure was confusing.
The players on the team seemed to almost threaten a revolt if they didn’t get their way. But they were – like many other people – rightfully frustrated by the person leading the search, Pat Kraft. Progress has both been halted and made.
Everything seemed to settle down a bit by 10 p.m. on Thursday night. The name had been picked: Matt Campbell from Iowa State. It’d be a done deal come Friday morning.
But when an Iowa State reporter said on their message board they were confident Campbell was staying in the final hours of day 53 based on some information they’d received, it caused pure chaos in the first hours of day 54. This process – which in the grand scheme of things may have been only a day or two behind schedule – was potentially experiencing another setback that would keep Groundhog Day very much alive.
It came too late in the evening for Penn State’s beat to respond, and by the time Penn State woke up the next morning, it wasn’t the primary story.
Unverified audio of a meeting between several Penn State players, Kraft and another staff member had been leaked on a YouTube page outside of the Penn State sphere. And unless it was the greatest artificial intelligence fake of all time, it was genuine audio aimed at making Kraft look bad.
It may have been a confusing, last-ditch effort to save face for those who wanted Terry Smith to take over the job full-time.
Yet it wasn’t all that bad for Kraft. Embarrassing for Kraft? Yes. Something that will be awkward to deal with at the next Big Ten meeting? For sure. But not the smoking gun that those who supported Smith ardently with printed signs spread all over the place were looking for.
It also may not have been the most important piece of audio to be released on Friday. On his radio show, LaVar Arrington explained so many of the forces and factors holding Penn State back – not just in this process but in moving forward. It – a near 25-minute discussion – was the must-listen event of the day.
But quickly Penn State moved on from that because the news that Campbell would leave Ames, Iowa for State College, Pennsylvania – much closer to where he’s from – had been confirmed.
By the end, the Lions247’s main thread on the process featured more comments than seats inside Beaver Stadium. They turned from worry to celebration.
With that, the saga, the party, the pissing match had begun to wind down, and the search for the hangover cure had started.
Of course, there will need to be some conversations, some more frank than the others, had over the next few days.
Some of the wounds reopened in this process may take a bit longer than a few days to heal, too.
Maybe the time capsule of this week — including the tape and the proverbial hatchet — can be buried next to the Temple game tape on the practice field. Who knows? Nothing about the future is certain, and no one will truly know — even when the mess is cleaned up — what just happened.
Whatever it was, whatever we just experienced, Penn State got there.
Penn State got its coach.
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