Penn State's Coaching Search Is on the Verge of Becoming a Shitshow

Credit to Barstool's own Liam Blutman, who has been in the trenches over the last 48 hours as seemingly the internet's foremost source on the Penn State coaching search. It seemed like things in Happy Valley were finally nearing a conclusion and BYU's Kalani Sitake would be the Nittany Lions' new head coach, but now here we are on Tuesday with still no deal done and things seeming like they could be going off the rails.

BYU has put on a full-court press to retain its head coach that has the Cougars on the verge of the College Football Playoff, including the CEO of Crumbl Cookies — headquartered just outside Provo — seemingly indicating he was ready to do whatever it takes to keep Sitake at BYU.

If Sitake does decide to say, it certainly seems Penn State will be scrambling. Brian Hartline is still out there, but I don't think any reasonable PSU fan would have signed up to fire James Franklin to hire Hartline two months ago. But this is the risk you run when you fire a coach who won 10 games every year. It turns out there aren't a ton of coaches itching to sign up for a job where that level of success is unacceptable.

After Hartline, I'm not even sure where Penn State would go. Brian Kelly? Jeff Brohm? Even Sitake is below the level of coach I imagine most Penn State fans thought they would get — at least in terms of perception — but if he doesn't end up in Happy Valley, things could go south quickly.

Obviously only time will tell, but I don't see how you label this coaching search anything other than a failure. Penn State fired Franklin to be the first major job open this cycle and here it is the day before National Signing Day begging their eighth choice to leave BYU while everyone else has already made hires. Tough scenes.