UNIVERSITY PARK - Stop with all the talk about Ed DeChellis getting fired.
It's not happening anytime soon. Not now with Penn State 0-8 in the Big Ten and not even if this train wreck of a season winds up 0-18 in league play.
Which it very well could, although 3-15 seems more likely.
Should DeChellis be fired?
Sure, under the right circumstances, and if Penn State cared greatly about building a consistently strong men's basketball program.
But these are not the right circumstances, and the belief here is PSU does not care a great deal about becoming a basketball power.
Last year's NIT title earned DeChellis a contract extension through the 2013-14 season, at roughly $700,000 per year. To fire a coach less than a year after giving him an extension would make some very smart people at PSU look pretty stupid.
Also, a school that needs eight home football games to pay the bills and is getting ready to institute what amounts to a private seat license in 2011 to make more money is not about to eat whatever it would take to buy out four years of DeChellis' contract.
So like it or not, the coach stays, through the end of this season and all of next.
Will it be NCAA Tournament or bust next year? No. But if DeChellis can't find a way to win 20 games with a team packed with seniors, one of the best players in program history in Talor Battle and Battle's stud little brother, Taran Buie, then he should be shown the door.
"The criticism is what it is," DeChellis said after Wednesday's 77-67 loss to Illinois. "People can criticize; that's their right. We're 0-8."
He then added the coach's staple of "I don't read what you guys write. I really don't care. I've got to do what I've got to do and our staff has to do what we have to do. If I start worrying about criticism, I wouldn't get anything done."
What DeChellis has gotten done in seven seasons is reach two NITs, win 27 games one year and max out at 15 two other times. That would not be good enough for any school that places great emphasis on men's basketball to give a coach a contract extension, but again, we're talking about a football school that has never tried to become anything but that.
The toughest part about this whole mess is that it's genuinely difficult to criticize Ed DeChellis. He is a terrific guy, a professional in every way and a great representative of Penn State University.
Eleven months ago, longtime Penn State reporter Pat Boland from State College's ESPN Radio was hospitalized and underwent lung surgery. DeChellis made a point of visiting Boland in the hospital, as did athletic director Tim Curley, and Boland spoke on my radio show yesterday about how much that meant to him personally.
You can probably count on one hand the number of Division I head coaches who would take the time to do what DeChellis did.
There are so many knuckleheads who succeed in sports yet receive our admiration, and here we have a man in DeChellis who possesses first-class character but who many fans want to see ousted.
That's a shame, but add it to the list of a million other things in life that just aren't fair.
This is big-time college basketball, and being a nice guy simply is not enough when your program is in shambles during your seventh season.
"I'm not happy, players aren't happy, fans aren't happy," DeChellis said. "No one's happy. But only we can do something about it."
That process has to start with the players. It's easy to blame DeChellis and his staff, but the real story of this season is how many of the key players on the team, other than Battle, not only have failed to make progress, they've actually regressed since last season.
At some point, college athletes have to step up, make plays and figure things out. Penn State's players have failed to do that, letting down their head coach and hanging him out to dry for all the problems.
"We're a team. We're one family," junior forward David Jackson said. "You can't put it on just one person or a group of people. We win as a team and we lose as a team. We dug ourselves in this hole, and we're all going to dig ourselves out."
If they don't, Penn State should and probably will be looking for a new head coach after next season.
Cory Giger can be reached at 949-7031 and cgsports12@aol.com.
