Penn State Football: Bill O'Brien Will Recover from Past Collegiate Failures

According to Chris Mortensen, Bill O'Brien, offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots, will be the new football coach at Penn State, taking over after the dismissal of legendary coach Joe Paterno.

This isn't the first time O'Brien has occupied the sidelines as a college football coach. He's spent time at Georgia Tech, Maryland and Duke.

He was offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech and Duke. At each school, he also spent time as a quarterbacks or running backs coach.

O'Brien never really found true success until he started working under Bill Belichick as an offensive assistant for the Patriots.

It never hurts to have Tom Brady as your quarterback, but O'Brien didn't skip a beat from what previous coordinators had accomplished when he took over OC duties this season.

O'Brien has seen a lot of success in New England, including developing players like Wes Welker, Anthony Hernandez, Rob Gronkowski and BenJarvus Green-Ellis. Now, he will have to prove that he can do the same with college players.

It isn't clear what kind of success O'Brien will have as a head coach, since he has never had that position at any level. But to his credit, he's been working under Belichick's system for about five years now, so he'll be able to bring something new to the table.

He will be able to rely on his past success running a NFL offense, while also being able to implement his own system for the Nittany Lions.

While he hasn't had much success with his previous stops on the collegiate level, this time around he will have a different responsibility as head coach.

His ability to recruit will definitely be in question, but he'll have to do a good job in improving what is currently the 40th-best class coming into the 2012 season.

It is unlikely that he will make any major splashes this late in the recruiting season, but he should be able to build around what Paterno has left behind.

There is no doubt that it'll be tough for O'Brien to live up to the expectations left by Paterno, but he should be able to get off to a good start and make a name for himself.

Hopefully for the Nittany Lions, it will be the move in the right direction.