Penn State Football: Captain Obvious Bill O'Brien Names Matt McGloin Starting QB

For months now, the biggest question surrounding the 2012 Penn State football team was who would be the starting quarterback. And for months, the answer has been Matt McGloin. But Bill O'Brien had never actually come out and said it, so we had to keep pretending it was a question.

Pretend no longer, friends; the secret is out. Per the Lions247 Twitter feed, Matt McGloin is the man. And as with all disappointing news, Bill O'Brien came out with it on a Friday. 

The matter of a backup is also going to be of great importance, since Matt McGloin is not very good at football. O'Brien addressed that too. From Penn State staffer Tony Mancuso's Twitter feed, sophomore Paul Jones is the second-stringer. Mancuso also said that Rob Bolden is still with the team and working out for the summer.

This was all pretty obvious from the start. McGloin is by far the most productive quarterback on the team, and it's pretty much a tossup whether Rob Bolden or Paul Jones has the worse track record thus far (and Jones has zero passes and a year of academic ineligibility on his resume).

Why O'Brien even waited this long to name his starting quarterback is in and of itself a mystery. It should be mentioned that he's a first-year head coach, and he at least owes it to his team to exercise some due diligence in his evaluations of his players. But it shouldn't require months of observation to come to the conclusion that McGloin is the best quarterback on the team.

As for what this means for Penn State, it's not a blessing. McGloin is a former walk-on, and he has the physical talent to back that up. He sees open receivers that he can't possibly hit and throws toward them anyway, often with terrifying results.

And he's easily the best quarterback on the team.

As I've mentioned before, though, it's nice to see Bolden still on the team. College football has too many players who chase dreams and playing time to academically inferior schools, usually at no benefit to their pro prospects. Bolden's getting a free education at Penn State. That's not a thing worth giving up if pro football isn't exactly on your radar.