Posts tagged ‘Dana O’Neil’
Catching Up on My Sandusky Reading
Most of the news media that swarmed all over town in early November are gone—at least for now. I do see a big truck marked “Court TV In Session” parked along College Avenue on my way to work each morning, but for the most part the frenzy seems to have subsided.
(I’m sure the media will descend again as Dec. 13, the date of the preliminary hearing for Jerry Sandusky, approaches. See this story from the Centre Daily Times about the expected influx of reporters and cameras on the 13th.)
Meanwhile, at the magazine offices we’re focused pretty intently on trying to finish the January-February issue, which will be devoted almost entirely to the crisis and its fallout. And we’re also trying to keep up with online coverage of the scandal: Penn State may not be the lead story on the TV news anymore (thank goodness), but there’s still a steady stream of newspaper and magazine coverage on the Web.
I’ve already posted two previous lists of articles that I think are worth reading (here and here). In case you haven’t reached the saturation point yet, here are 10 that I’ve read more recently that I’d also recommend:
1. “My Second Mile: How I Grew Up With The Now-Doomed Organization.” Thomas L. Day ’03, who first wrote about the scandal for the Washington Post, is back with a piece at Deadspin.com about his own experience as a Second Mile kid. It was a good experience and, he says, somehow the news media doesn’t want to hear about those.
2. “Missteps at Every Turn.” In this week’s Sports Illustrated, a harsh look at Penn State’s handling of the events, especially the naming of Ken Frazier ’75 to chair the Trustees’ special investigations task force and Dave Joyner ’72, ’76g as acting athletic director.
3. “Rich in Success, Rooted in Secrecy.” This ran in the New York Times more than a week ago, but I didn’t get a chance to read it until now. It’s a profile of former Penn State President Graham Spanier and the mixed (more…)
Summer Reading List: Patrick Chambers Version
It’s generally pretty tough to find college basketball stories in early June, but there’s been some awfully good stuff written about Patrick Chambers, Penn State’s new coach. Here’s a selection of some of our favorites:
Dave Jones of the Harrisburg Patriot-News provides some excellent analysis (as always) in this column, and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Bob Ford weighs in with this piece. And Mike Poorman of StateCollege.com takes a truly original angle here.
And it wasn’t just local media. My former colleague at The Daily Collegian, Dana O’Neil, who now covers college basketball for ESPN.com, weighs in here on why she thinks Penn State’s hire is a good one. Mike DeCourcey of The Sporting News is equally impressed in this piece. And here’s Jeff Eisenberg of Yahoo, detailing how getting stabbed was the first step in Chambers’ journey to Penn State.
One final link: The take from Boston, where Chambers had been coaching at Boston University.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Penn State Picks Pat Chambers
Eleven days after Ed DeChellis ’82 abruptly stepped down as Penn State’s men’s basketball coach, Penn State has named his replacement: Boston University head coach Pat Chambers. He’ll be introduced at a news conference at University Park on Monday afternoon.
Chambers was at BU just two years, but posted two 21-win seasons and took the Terriers to the NCAA tournament in just his second year (though the Boston Globe couldn’t resist pointing out that he did it largely with the players he inherited from the previous coach, Dennis Wolff).
Before BU—and this is the part that many Penn State fans find appealing—he spent five seasons as an assistant under Jay Wright at Villanova. The Wildcats went to the Sweet Sixteen in four of those five seasons, including their Final Four appearance in 2009.
Penn State athletic director Tim Curley ’76, ’78g surely found Chambers’ Philly-area recruiting ties appealing. Besides his stint at Villanova, Chambers also grew up in the Philly area and played at Philadelphia University under Herb Magee, who was just named to the Hall of Fame this year.
Dave Jones of the Harrisburg Patriot-News, often a harsh critic of the Penn State program, thinks Chambers has a chance to be the kind of recruiting salesman that Penn State badly needs.
ESPN’s Dana O’Neil ’90 is even more enthusiastic: “Penn State finally breathed life into a program that, for years, has reeked of mothballs,” she writes. “Bruce Parkhill begat Jerry Dunn begat Ed DeChellis, all decent coaches, all good men and all who moved the energy meter about an eighth of an inch every five years.” Chambers, by contrast, “is the typical kid from a big Irish family (12 kids in all), who is used to living large and loud and who has a fire and intensity that borders on manic.”
For an interesting profile of Chambers, check out this story from the Boston University website.
Tina Hay, editor
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