UNIVERSITY PARK — The biggest mystery surrounding the Penn State football program in at least a decade will go on for at least one more day. And chances are the answer to who will be the Nittany Lions’ starting quarterback in Saturday’s season opener may not be known until Penn State hits the Beaver Stadium turf shortly after the noon kickoff this weekend.
At his weekly press conference Tuesday, coach Joe Paterno repeatedly said that he and his coaching staff, most notably offensive coordinator Galen Hall and QB coach Jay Paterno, have not yet decided on any one player for the all-important spot. So that means sophomores Matt McGloin and Kevin Newsome as well as true freshman Robert Bolden, a summer enrollee, will all see action.
Now just who takes the opening snap, well that’s just not settled yet.
“We’ll probably play a couple kids,” Paterno said. “You just don’t know what you’re going to get because none of them have been through a lot of pressure. So we will see what happens.”
Senior receiver Brett Brackett, who came to Penn State as a quarterback five years ago and was named one of the team’s co-captains along with Ollie Ogbu on Tuesday, said the trio have split time with the first unit during practice.
“They’ve all been doing really well,” said Brackett. “We have a pretty comfortable situation with whoever they decide to go with.”
Newsome, one of the nation’s top quarterback recruits just two years ago, entered preseason camp as the prohibitive favorite after serving as Daryll Clark’s backup a year ago. His experience, while minimal, seemed to give him a big edge considering Paterno’s long-time reluctance to play underclassmen while older players are in the program.
McGloin, a former walk-on from Scranton, was third-string behind Newsome last year and Bolden, along with fellow freshman Paul Jones, were not on the roster at this time last season.
But Newsome was unable to create space between himself and the others during the August preseason, creating the log jam. Bolden, out of Michigan, has been the most impressive during fall camp, forcing the coaches to give him a real look despite the fact that he is by far the least experienced of the bunch.
While Jones, who arrived in January and out-played both Newsome and McGloin in the Blue-White game in April, is expected to redshirt, the others are all expected to take snaps against Youngstown State on Saturday. On the depth chart, released Sunday, McGloin is listed first, but Newsome and Bolden are both followed by “OR,” showing the coaches’ reluctance to select one over the other with two big capital letters.
With a trip to Tuscaloosa to take on defending national champion Alabama a little more than a week away, Paterno said all of the quarterbacks will play against the Penguins with hopes to get all of them some experience before heading into the SEC cauldron next week.
“To be honest with you, we’ve got some kids we really like, and think they are going to be pretty good,” Paterno said. “There’s more than one. But at this stage, I couldn’t tell you which one is going to come to the front as the guy to lead the team, or whether we have one who can handle the kinds of situations that the quarterbacks are going to have to handle as the season goes on.”
-- Sports editor Bill Bowman covers college sports for The Daily Item. E-mail comments to bbowman@dailyitem.com.
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Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno shakes hands with newly-elected offensive team captain Brett Brackett after Paterno's weekly NCAA college football news conference on Tuesday in State College. The Associated Press
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