New Penn State coach Bill O'Brien known for intensity

The first live glimpse State College got of the newly hired coach appeared to confirm the image of a bulging-eyed martinet ubiquitous TV clips had shown screaming and stomping on NFL sidelines.

Striding hurriedly away from his trailing wife, Bill O'Brien was texting madly as he departed Penn State's jet in State College late Friday afternoon.

No one would have believed that the balding 42-year-old hustling to his date with an uncertain destiny had grown up on Serenity Lane.

As far as anyone knows, those boyhood years in a corner house in Andover, Mass., marked O'Brien's last encounter with serenity.

Until this wild week, which culminated Saturday with his being introduced as Joe Paterno's successor at scandal-scarred Penn State, the New England Patriots assistant was better known for his temperament than his talent.

Described by one friend as "fiercely intense but a guy you'd enjoy having a beer with," O'Brien famously engaged in a high-decibel dispute with Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in December, then delivered a war-dance of an address to his offensive line.

Those well-publicized tantrums have further inflamed the instant unhappiness his hiring engendered in Happy Valley.

Critics wondered why someone from the vast Nittany Lions family couldn't have been found and how a little-known aide from an NFL team whose better-known assistants have made spectacularly ineffective head coaches is going to shore up this badly damaged program.

But friends, former colleagues, and those who played for him contend O'Brien has been unfairly tarnished, especially for that spat with Brady.

"First of all, Tom Brady said afterward that he deserved it and that he respected Bill," said Phil Estes, a friend and former colleague who now is Brown's head coach. "Billy's a coach. A lot of people wouldn't have gone in there and tried to coach Tom Brady. They would just let him line up, do his thing, and win. Not Billy. He's coaching all the time. Tom Brady might know a lot of football, but Billy's going to coach him anyway."

Estes and others concede that while O'Brien might occasionally spill over the top, he's also an X's-and-O's genius who is never unprepared, comprehends football's complexities, and teaches them passionately. More significantly for this program fraught with doubts and troubles, he can be extremely persuasive.