Tom Bradley Press Conference: Unfair to Judge Interim Coach from What We Saw

If you haven't seen Tom Bradley's Press Conference, I am sure that it will be on ESPN quite a bit today. 

I watched it and came away with some mixed emotions. Bradley came off as surly at times and clearly didn't want to answer any questions that had anything to do with the ongoing scandal at Penn State, but can you blame him?

It's obvious that Bradley won't be at Penn State after this season. There's just no practical way that anyone who has anything to do with the current football team will be a part of the football team in 2011. 

He answered the questions that were asked of him that he could reasonably answer. 

Keep in mind that while Bradley has been at Penn State for a long time, he has not been the face of that program at any point. Honestly, how many people who aren't Penn State fans even knew who Tom Bradley was?

The face of Penn State football is Joe Paterno. After that, it's the players that he's coached in all of his years there. 

So, while he's been there for an awfully long time, Bradley's not very adept at handling these situations. 

So, if you're not very adept at handling the situation, is this really the situation where you would want to all of a sudden become the face of Penn State football?

This is pretty hectic to me, and it's just not fair to judge any of his flaws that we saw. 

The fact of the matter is that while he can talk about the legal issues, it's perfectly understandable that he would not want to go anywhere near them.

It's also understandable that he would want nothing to do with talking about Mike McQueary.

Given how awful, bizarre and sudden this situation is, Bradley handled himself quite well today. One week ago at this time, could anyone out there have envisioned anything close to this happening? 

I sure couldn't. 

Given the fact that he's right in the middle of the storm, Bradley should be allowed a lot of slack.