Bill O’Brien has reeled in yet another top quarterback prospect, with the commitment of Michael O’Connor from Florida for the class of 2014.

O’Connor plays for former Florida State Heisman Trophy winner Chris Weinke,  so is already in what is described as a pro-style offense.  The 6-5, 223-pound senior will hone those skills for another year in high school before joining freshman Christian Hackenberg and junior college transfer and sophomore Tyler Ferguson for the 2014 season.

That top QBs want to play for O’Brien should surprise no one.  The coach came to Penn State fresh off tutoring Tom Brady in New England, and while you could argue the most any coach needed to do there was not screw it up, O’Brien did a lot more than that for Brady and the Pats offense, if you ask me.

But what should really draw high school kids who want a shot at playing quarterback in the NFL is what O’Brien did with Penn State’s offense in general last year, and with QB Matt McGloin in particular.

This was basically the same unit that plodded through the 2011 season with McGloin and Rob Bolden still dueling it out for time under center.  In fact, the Lions top receiver and runner from 2011 transferred after the NCAA sanctions, so the offense really started two big paces behind in 2012.

But after just eight months under O’Brien, McGloin looked like Peyton Manning out there, coming to the line, surveying the defense, calling audibles, moving people around, making throws, and leading the Big Ten in passing.  Now, reports say McGloin has a legitimate shot at making the Oakland Raiders. 

Even if McGloin doesn’t end up playing on Sundays, the fact he had an honest chance after his first four years at Penn State can’t be lost on recruits.  If the Lions, either through lawsuit or negotiation, can get out from under the sanction imposed scholarship limits a year or two early, allowing O’Brien to beef up the line, backfield, and defensive recruiting, with any of the three QBs who will be in camp next year running that NASCAR offense, watch out!

I am glad to hear the Big Ten has signed an agreement to play in the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium in coming years.

While the allure of most bowls is for folks from the cold northeast, midwest, plains, and northwest to spend a week in warm, sunny climes during December or January, fact is such a trip is beyond the means of many folks.  With airlines, hotels, and restaurants all jacking their prices to the max, it’s just not feasible for many to get to a bowl game.

So, while a day in the Bronx in December may not be the ideal in terms of weather, Nittany Lion fans are used to cold weather games.  Bus trips for the day, or even an overnight in the Big Apple, while not cheap, would still be much less than winging it to Florida, Arizona, or New Orleans.

If you’re really just interested in the game, and are brave enough, you could even drive. 

The chances of Penn State appearing in the Pinstripe Bowl in a given year are not great, given it will depend on where in the Big Ten bowl lineup this one falls.  But, I would imagine folks in New York would push for flexibility so the Big Ten could let this selection float say, somewhere between the #3 and #6 conference teams, to increase the chances of Penn State, Rutgers, or Maryland getting the invite.  Fans from these three schools are much more likely to make this trip than anyone from Iowa or Nebraska.

This affiliation will also enhance the Big Ten’s move, with the addition of Rutgers, to try and make the New York market the conference’s own.  Many in the NYC area are Penn State fans, as alumni in NEPA, northern Jersey, and the greater New York City area are many, and the Big Apple has never had a consistent, big time program closer than PSU.

I don’t get to say this often.  Good move, Big Ten.

With the NCAA finally moving to a playoff to decide the national college football champion, albiet a flawed playoff in my view–there should be eight teams in the tourney, not four, I believe–the next question arises as to how those four teams will be chosen.

That process could have a major impact on how often Big Ten teams have a legitimate chance to play for a national title, at least until the tourney expands to eight teams, which I believe will happen within ten years, maybe five.

The BCS process was fatally flawed for many reasons, including giving certain conferences more weight regardless of how good teams in that league were in a given year, and continuing to rely on biased human polls and often unfathomable computer rankings to pick the top two teams. 

So, you’re asking, okay, genius, you got a better idea?  Well, no.  At least not today.

As flawed as the BCS was, some combination of human poll and computer analysis probably has merit.  Ultimately, the best method in my view is some type of basketball-like selection committee.  For all the yelling that goes on every March about which teams got left out or how the seeding was done, the tourney is exciting, and when it’s all said and done, the committee choices more often than not look pretty good.

The big problem for the Big Ten, as I see it, is the national perception of the league, which is not good.  Football experts seem to have bought in to the myth that there’s the SEC and everybody else.  I don’t.  The SEC has had the best couple of teams of late–LSU and Alabama, but as for depth, I don’t think that league is really any better than the Big Ten or Big 12 most times.  But perception will be reality in choosing tourney teams. 

How conferences will fit in, whether a team must win its conference championship game to qualify, and what to do about Notre Dame, are just a few of the other issues to be decided.

Eventually going to an eight-team tourney won’t take all these issues away.   But in my view, unlike basketball where at least 80 percent of the teams in the tourney are there for fun and to make some dough and have no real chance of winning, the football playoff will pit teams which have an honest chance of winning.  You don’t hear fans of the tenth-ranked team in the country with two losses claiming they should be given a chance to play for a title.

The tourney won’t end the debates, but these are much better debates to have than we’ve had in the past.

PSU’s pain continues.  With Sports Illustrated’s trumped up story, pending lawsuits, upcoming trials, and bowl bans, it won’t end soon.

But someday it will.  So, here’s a letter to those born the year of the scandal, the Penn State class of 2031.

Dear Graduate,

Today your Penn State experience concludes, an experience profoundly different from mine, which ended 50 years ago.  You gleaned information from Google glasses and talking phones.  I actually went to Patee Library.  You dictated papers to your computer.  I used a typewriter.  I shot videotape, and edited reel to reel tapes in the radio studio.  You generate holographs and manipulate digital bytes.

But you graduate a Nittany Lion, as I did.  You take your place in a proud tradition, with a worthy degree from a fine public institution, known worldwide for engineers, meterologists, writers, business leaders, and good sports programs, including football, and as a school whose student athletes mostly graduate.

Your football team was once led by the most revered person in college athletics, who knew presidents and raised billions for the school, who set an example of winning with honor, but was fired and died amid accusation and suspicion the year you were born, forever changing how many see your school.  Atrocities committed against children, how unversity leaders handled those crimes, and how the school’s trustees reacted when the news became a national disgrace, produced a rift in the Penn State family that festers still.

This is the only Penn State you’ve ever known.  You see it with the perspective of history, but without the rose colored tint of Happy Valley before 2011. 

We who care about Penn State have spent these last two decades rebuilding our image and rededicating our priorities, which I think are the same as a half century ago.  In 1981, we were proud of our football team, and proud of our theater, our Blue Band, Americ’a first African-American astronaut, our academic prowess, the community leaders our alumni were, and that we became.

Those horrible acts were the crimes of one person, and the wrong actions of a few more.  They never reflected what we were as a school.   You now know that, too.

I hope the class of 1981 showed you what it means to be a Penn Stater, as I’m confident you will show the class of 2081.  So as you cross campus for the last time as a student, give a nod to that goofy old guy in the Penn State tie.  That’s me.  I’m proud of you. 

I’m Penn State Proud. 

As I said last week, Bill O’Brien continues to make all the right moves as captain of the Penn State football ship.  He surely did last year, going 8-4 after losing his first two games, and probably exceeding the expectations of just about everybody. 

Sports, like politics and Wall Street, is often a game of expectations.  You are much better to set the bar low and clear it, than set it high and run smack into it.  Having rather easily cleared what was a fairly low standard last year– a winning season, even 6-6 probably would have been acceptable to most in Lion Country–O’Brien now faces higher hopes from the beleagured faithful in Happy Valley.

After all, O’Brien lost several high profile players from a not so great 2011 squad, kept everybody on track through the storm, and competed at a very high level.  He sent Jordan Hill, Mike Mauti and Gerald Hodges to the NFL.  He made Matt McGloin look like the best quarterback in the Big Ten on several Saturdays.  He turned a predictable, slogging offense into an up-tempo, fun to watch unit that could beat you any number of ways.

So, Bill, what do you do for an encore?

Some college football prediction outfit called Football Outsiders (I’d post a link but you have to pay) says Penn State will go 9-3 this year, and finish third in the (mercifully) final year of the Leaders Division.  This group apparently has a sophisticated computer program which takes teams strengths and weaknesses, projects them against their opponents pluses and minuses, and runs this all thorugh a simulated schedule 1,000 times to predict a season’s outcome.

Yikes.

I suspect that many fans, sans computer analysis, are expecting big things from O’Briens’ Lions in year two as well.  Forget the quarterback inexperience, the defense that must replace those three NFL draftees and three other starters, the still iffy kicker, and a pretty tough schedule.

That schedule includes eight bowl teams from last year.  The Lions open in the Meadowlands against resurgent Syracuse, face Central Florida which played in the Conference USA title game, and Kent State, which missed the MAC’s first-ever BCS appearance by losing the conference title game.  Plus Michigan and Nebraska at home, and Ohio State and Wisconsin on the road in conference.

 Bill O’Brien has given Lions’ fans hope .  With still more trials and Trustees upheaval to come, it’s tempting to look to Saturday afternoons on the field for relief.

Let’s just not get carried away.