O’Brien Discusses His Promise to Joe Paterno
Bill O’Brien has been keeping busy on the second Coaches Caravan, a dinner and meet-and-greet tour on which O’Brien and other Penn State athletic coaches get a chance to interact with fans and alumni. There was a video released by Fight On State following a recent stop on Penn State’s DuBois campus of O’Brien’s speech, the second-to-last destination on this spring’s Coaches Caravan.
One thing of note in the video — aside from the impeccable impression of his mom — is a titbit that O’Brien offered regarding a conversation that he had with the late Joe Paterno soon before he passed away, after O’Brien had already accepted the position as Penn State’s next head coach.
“Can you just promise me that you’ll continue the tradition of tough Penn State football with fantastic academics — guys that graduate and guys that go to class?” O’Brien says that Paterno asked him. “And I promised him I would do that on a daily basis. We’ve got that type of team.”
Skip ahead to 6:06 in the below video for O’Brien’s comments:
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