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Should PSU have hired someone other than Matt Campbell?
Penn State hired the wrong coach.
It should have been either Bob Chesney or Terry Smith instead of Matt Campbell.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Campbell needs to be fired. That simply cannot happen, since the school would still owe him $61 million.
Campbell is going to be Penn State's coach for at least a few more years. So we'd all better learn some patience, because this looks like it could be a difficult rebuild.
There is no rebuild going on at UCLA, where Chesney is off to a 5-0 start that includes a win at Oregon.
Penn State could have had Chesney at any point in the hiring process. But AD Pat Kraft was too busy wasting time on a pipe dream involving luring Kalani Sitake from BYU, not only his alma mater, but also a huge part of his life as he's a Mormon.
Chesney, meanwhile, is from Kulpmont in eastern PA. He would have taken the PSU job in a heartbeat after leading James Madison to the College Football Playoff last season.
Rather than go on and on about Chesney, though, I want to make the case that Smith should have been hired as head coach. He did a good job as the interim coach last year after James Franklin was fired, and Smith nearly led the Lions to an upset over Indiana.
Hiring Smith, who's never been a full-time college head coach, would have been a gamble. It would have brought a lot of external criticism, although PSU fans likely would have embraced it.
I was told last year by a few people I trust that Penn State did not want to hire Smith in part because of his ties to the past. Like it or not, there are people running PSU who want to live in the present, not constantly have to deal with or associate with the Joe Paterno past.
Smith obviously has extensive ties to all of that, and again, from what I was told, it may have worked against him to a degree.
OK, but not long ago, the school announced it was opening a Paterno exhibit in the All-Sports Museum. And Campbell has gone all in on embracing lettermen and other parts of Penn State's tradition.
If tying into the past was part of the plan all along, no one could have done a better job of that than Smith.
As for the present and future, Smith would have done a better job than Campbell in those areas, too.
We can't know for sure, but the belief here is that Smith might have been able to keep a large number of the PSU players who transferred after the season. He was Ethan Grunkemeyer's head coach late last season, so maybe the QB would have stayed instead of following Franklin to Virginia Tech. Perhaps tight end Luke Reynolds, as well.
You put Grunk and Reynolds on this year's team, and there's no way the Lions are 0-3 in the Big Ten.
Smith is also an elite recruiter. He probably would have been able to keep at least some of the recruiting class that evaporated with Franklin's departure.
Smith might not have been the solution for the next 10 years, but he would have been a good, unifying fit for five years or so.
I can't say for sure that Smith would have been the best coaching hire. But I really believe he would not have been worse than Campbell has been so far.
Cory Giger hosts the Blue & White Wrapup postgame show following each PSU game on JACK-FM 107.1.