Energetic, affable Kotelnicki right where he always wanted to be with Lions

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- It's amazing how much Andy Kotelnicki's life changed because he didn't get the Penn State job he wanted nearly three years ago.

For those who believe in the whole "there's a plan for everything in life" kind of stuff, we heard Friday how that plan came full circle for the Nittany Lions' new offensive coordinator.

By now, you've probably heard that Kotelnicki not only won his opening press conference, he absolutely crushed it! Everyone listening to him came away impressed by his personality, candor, likability -- you know, all that good stuff we like to see in people.

In short, Kotelnicki just comes across as a really good dude, the kind you'd want to sit down and have an adult beverage with and shoot the s*** talking football.

Now, winning press conferences is fine and all, but we still don't know for sure if, you know, Kotelnicki can actually do a great job in his new role. Time will reveal the answer to that.

But here's what we did learn about Kotelnicki from a first impressions standpoint.

• He was in the running for a lesser Penn State job not long ago, but didn't get it.

About a half hour before Kotelnicki's press conference, Penn State running backs coach Ja'Juan Seider dropped a fascinating little nugget that, from what I can tell, hadn't been disclosed by media or fans. Seider revealed that "back in the day," Kotelnicki, who was OC at Buffalo at the time, had interviewed for the tight ends coach job with the Lions following the 2020 season.

What made that extra fascinating is that, sitting to Seider's left was Ty Howle, who actually got that tight ends coach job. Seider and Howle have been serving as interim co-offensive coordinators since Mike Yurcich was fired, and will do so for the Peach Bowl.

So, to sum up, Howle got a job over a guy three years ago, he's now doing that job on an interim basis, and yet the other guy was just hired to be his boss. That's kind of the definition of surreal and epitomizes the whole, when life closes one door it opens a window.

I asked Kotelnicki about not getting the tight ends coach job and how it essentially changed his life, because it put him in position to go to Kansas and excel, leading him to this much bigger job and opportunity.

"It's kind of funny you said that," Kotelnicki said. "I really have not thought about that too much. But I joke with (Kansas) Coach (Lance) Leipold, he didn't hire me the first time he interviewed me either. So, I don't know, something about my first impression maybe just doesn't fit well.

"But the the the unique thing is, Coach Howle getting the job ... and then to come here and continue to collaborate with those people, it's a pretty cool deal when you think about where life takes you. If I would have been here, would I have gone to Kansas and been part of what they're doing there now? Probably not is the answer. So, to be able to go there and grow with the people that I was there ... it's life, and you never know where it's gonna take you."

Then Kotelnicki added something really important, something everybody should be aware of when it comes to building relationships whenever you can. He didn't get the Penn State tight ends coach job, but he still clearly made a good impression on James Franklin a few years ago, leading everyone to where they are today.

"The relationships that you have with people, you never know when they're gonna be really meaningful," Kotelnicki said. "No matter how maybe insignificant or significant it feels at the time, next thing you know, 15 years later, that person, you're working with them side by side and your livelihoods kind of depend on each other."

• A Pennsylvania boy with a Penn ... no, wait, but something close.

Franklin's famous opening press conference line years ago endeared him to fans right away when he said he was "a Pennsylvania boy with a Penn State heart."

Well, Kotelnicki went around busting his head on things wearing a Penn State helmet when he was a kid, so that's pretty interesting, too.

He's not from PA, but Minnesota. And he told a cool story about becoming a Penn State fan when he was a young boy.

Before I tell his story, here's one of my own.

I've always been fascinated by how people become fans of a team. Most people just latch on to their local team. But lots of other fans have some kind of quirky little life experience when they're young that leads them to a random team, sometimes from very far away.

I grew up in Arkansas but became a lifelong Syracuse basketball fan at 10 years old when I saw Pearl Washington hit a half-court shot to beat Boston College in 1984. I had never heard of Syracuse or Pearl Washington, but that shot changed my life, as something just clicked and I began watching them all the time.

I have a friend who got a Washington Redskins football out of a claw machine at Pizza Hut when he was a kid, and he's been a Redskins (Commanders) fan ever since. Another friend played Tecmo Bowl as a kid and always used Bo Jackson -- obviously! -- and that turned him into a lifelong fan of not only the Raiders, but also other San Francisco teams such as the Oakland A's and Golden State Warriors. I got a Lakers sticker in a pack of basketball cards as a kid and, knowing nothing about the team, started following the Lakers with Kareem and Magic.

Anyway, here's Kotelnicki telling his cool little story about how he got a Penn State football helmet when he was a kid, and that did the trick to making him a Nittany Lion fan. Note, this is how he opened his press conference, coming in sort of guns ablazin' and lighting up the room with his personality.

Take note in the video above of the comical part of him saying, "When you got a helmet for the first time, you just started headbutting each other, running into trees." He was 6 or 7 years old doing that, which you can just picture in your mind a little boy going around headbutting things.

Again, note that this was this guy's first 2 minutes and 18 seconds speaking publicly as a Penn State coach, and he's already diving right into the good stuff. The rest of the 35-minute press conference went about the same way, including Kotelnicki finding a way to weave a Dairy Queen Blizzard story into a discussion his offensive philosophy.

"A messy piece of deliciousness."

• So, let's get into the nuts and bolts of the messy deliciousness

Quirky stories and talking about ice cream grab your attention in a press conference. But what will Kotelnicki do with Penn State's offense to grab the attention of opposing defenses?

There was a lot of discussion about that, as well.

"I'm gonna give you the elevator pitch on what we would want to do offensively," he said. "I will tell you that it's a multiple pro-style offense that uses spread concepts and components, and emphasis on the word multiple, because it's about putting players in a position to be successful."

What does all that mean?

The skinny on Kotelnicki is that he's able to adapt his offense to the personnel. And he'll have to do that at Penn State, because he can't be running a triple-option kind of system like he did at Kansas when he has a pure pocket passer in Drew Allar.

"As long as you as a teacher and a coach understand what your players' capabilities are -- and more importantly know what their limitations are -- as long as you can work around those and you have a clear definition in your mind and what those things are, you can put them on the field to be successful," Kotelnicki said.

"There's really two spectrums when you think about putting together an offense or defense," he added. "You have systems, and then you have people. I think when you focus so much on the system, if you're a person that doesn't fit into whatever that mold in that system needs to be, it's really hard to be successful if you don't fit it exactly.

"Where we tend to lean here, it's about the people, the players. What do they do well, what are they capable of, what are the limitations? And let's focus and do things that are going to put them in positions to be successful. Now, I know that that sounds like the first thing that you would hear in some sort of coaching theory class. But I'm just telling you, theory and practice are two totally different things.

"Every coach wants to say that. But it's a hell of a lot easier to just have a system and kind of try to fit the pieces into it. You have to do a lot more critical reflection as a teacher and a coach to figure out what makes the players go, what things they do well. ... If you can't do this, in my opinion, as a coordinator, you're missing the boat. Because it's always gonna be about people."

• The freedom forum?

Here's where the rubber meets the road with any Penn State offensive coordinator.

Will Franklin give the guy enough autonomy to run his system without interfering ... much?

Kotelnicki discussed how he and Franklin went over a whole bunch of details during the interview process to make sure everyone is on the same page. It's not so much that the new OC expressed concerns about being able to run his system, but it seemed pretty clear that he wanted some clarity upfront about how things could go.

"It wasn't snap my fingers and show up, and it wasn't a 'you want the job' and show up," Kotelnicki said. "There was a long, many dialogues, countless conversations about theory, philosophy responsibilities, staff, to make sure that it's a good fit. We've said that word a lot -- alignment and fit -- and really, the only way that you can ensure that you have those things is by spending time with one another and asking questions and hard questions in getting to know one another.

"So, very much feel that we'll be able to do things here to what we feel we need to do to improve."

• And ... the Tigger vs. Eeyore thing

This is what Kotelnicki has pinned on his X/Twitter:

What's the story behind that?

Pretty simply, really. It's all about mindset and what kind of person you want to be.

"One's very lethargic and he's down and his body language always stinks," Kotelnicki said of Eeyore. "And the other guy's fired up no matter whatever the situation is.

"How does that apply to football?

"You see, in football, it's not what you do. It's not the schemes that we're going to run. It's not the plays we're going to call. It's how we do those things. ... So, what's going to separate us from (other teams and players)? The answer needs to be how we do those things. We need to be a lot more like Tigger when we do those things. When it ... requires a lot of discipline, not be an Eeyore when you're doing the mundane things to be a better football player."