Will He, Won't He

I have been glued to this computer the last 48 hours now, obsessively checking Google and Yahoo for the latest developments in the Penn State coaching search.  Of personal interest to me, of course, is the fact that current Miami coach Al Golden is among the top three candidates that are being pursued at the moment.  Since he is scheduled to meet with PSU officials today, there will be a lot of anticipation among college football fans who will be watching closely and flooding the internet with posts, blogs, tweets, and every other possible medium through which information can be viewed.

Yesterday, there were conflicting reports about Golden.  At least one source supposedly had it confirmed that Golden was already offered the job and was expected to accept.  Going by that report, it seemed to me that it was about 90 per cent certain that Golden was the new Penn State football coach. It stopped just short of declaring it a done deal.  However, several conflicting reports soon popped up, one of them claiming that Golden had no intention of leaving Miami.  All these reports aside, it seems that the consensus is that the two parties will meet today, and nothing can be officially confirmed until the results of this meeting are made public.

Something about all these various reports reminds me of something that happened in the WWF back in the late eighties.  Near the beginning of a weekly show, manager/commentator Bobby Heenan announced that he had a new wrestler under contract by the name of Bam Bam Bigelow.  In his words, he had Bigelow signed, sealed, and delivered.  Within a few minutes, each of the other four WWF heel managers appeared in brief taped promos, one by one making the same announcement as Heenan.  Predictably, it turned out that Bigelow wanted none of them as a manager and chose someone else.  There actually isn’t much in common between this old WWF storyline and the PSU coaching search, except for the conflicting reports.  And in the case of PSU, none of the confusion comes from any of the parties involved.

But after all that, I’ll just keep looking back at the news reports.  Everyone will know for sure soon enough, and then all the analysis can begin.