Al Golden going to Happy Valley after all?

Well according to NBC Philadelphia (Comcast Sports Net Philadelphia) last night, they're reporting that Al Golden is back in play for the Penn State job. 

Here's my take on the AllCanes.com blog post about this today. 

Its true that each time another job from a power 6 conference comes up, Al has turned them down. However, that's not the case with Penn State, his alma mater, and a school where he was a star TE back from 1987-1991 and a team captain. 

As I said a few days ago, when this first came up, Golden's name was near the top of the list, and at that point, no one in the Hecht was talking, they went into bunker mode over there. Freet, Yandle, James weren't talking because they were in Al's inner circle. 

The statement on Sunday saying that he was staying. I've had a few days to read it, and I believe it was a forced statement by those in the Ashe Building (I suspect that order came from Donna herself), that Al was forced to give just to wield off the media and the fanbase for a little while, maybe to give PSU more time to do their due diligence, before coming back to Al to offer him the job and maybe accept. 

As for the interview with Rose on Monday, Al went on Shutdown mode. He was not going to talk about the Penn State job and then went to defend D'Onofrio and saying in his final presser later that day that there would be no changes. Simple fact, he wants to prove people wrong and do this his way. 

Now, In regards to this comment that Bello and/or The Beast posted on AllCanes, "Regarding this currently-rocky relationship between Miami and Golden—a couple somewhat on the outs—things can always take a turn for the better, barring there’s growth, change, unity and an ability to both forgive and forget."  I'll tell you this now, that paragraph tells me that if there's no trip to Charlotte next year, then, Blake is going to put his foot down on this and either force Al to make changes on the staff, or can him totally if he refuses to make any changes after next year. Golden wants to do it his way. OK, fine, but, I'm sure Blake and the higher-ups in the Ashe Building will give him this edict, if he stays, "get to Charlotte next year, or you're gone. We appreciate you staying through the dark days of the NCAA, but now that's that gone, the clock is ticking." With our biggest rival up North in Tallahassee having the Crystal Football, the pressure to get back to a Major Bowl/CFB Playoff went up 1000 fold. That clock is ticking even faster now. If we're not in Charlotte next year, it's not going to end well inside the Hecht. 

As I said a while ago, the CANES are at a crossroads and so is Al here, read Hyde's piece in Sun-Sentinel and you'll see how big this decision is for Golden going forward. What will Al do? What identity will we have on D especially? Hopefully, those questions get answered in the coming days, weeks, and months ahead. 

Al Golden will remain at UM

Al Golden has announced this afternoon that he will be staying at UM. You knew this wasn't going past tomorrow with this. I'll be interested to hear his presser at 12:30 tomorrow and Rose's interview with him in the morning on WQAM.

What happened at the 11th hour that Golden decided to stay?
One clue comes from one of the PSU insiders on their Scout Board: According to someone very close to the spouse of Al's wife, Kelly, Her parents moved down to Florida this past year to be closer to her and to get away from the cold weather, as you can see the last few days, it makes perfect sense. There was serious interest from Al in the Penn State job, however, with the family not wanting to back to the cold of the Northeast, that was a major stumbling block that PSU could not overcome in the end. This same person with knowledge of this that live in Lock Haven, PA and that are close the Hanna's said that any deal was never   close and\it was 100% a family decision, which was suspected was going to be the case. 


If it turns out to be Franklin, then I have to believe either Al pulled out at the 11th hour, or PSU brass told him that they were going another direction, and PSU probably let Al know that. This is a big blow to PSU who went all-in on Al and came up snake eyes. I believe another reason why Al likely said no was because of the sanctions PSU still has because of the horrors of Sandusky and the cover-up of JoePa in Happy Valley.

With Al now staying, he's going to have to make changes on the staff, and you can better believe, that's going to be something Blake James is going to tell him, namely canning D'Onofrio, ASAP. I still believe that as long as D'Onofrio is still running the defense, we will not get to the elite level, we will be a 9 to occasionally 10 win level team.

With Al now staying, its back to work. GO CANES!