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Q. With Matt Stankiewitch gone, who will be at center?

COACH O'BRIEN: Ty Howle will be in that mix. He'll be the starter going into the spring

there. We've got Wendy Laurent, who will play there, too, and we've got Angelo Mangiro who will be

in there. He's got a little bit of a hamstring issue right now so he won't be there initially. But hopefully

he can get out of the tub and get on to the field because that's where he needs to be, and he'll have a

chance to play center, too. He'll be in that competition.

One of the things that people ask me about is the offensive line all the time and I probably need

to do a better job of explaining this. So, like when we go out to practice today, we have a period calledSpecialists, it's five minutes before we go to stretch. And we'll have about six guys, and during

Specialists, you have kickers and punters working; you have the returns, you have the centers and

quarterbacks doing the center-quarterback exchange, and we'll have about six centers.

So we teach everybody, just about, how to snap the ball. We teach (John) Urschel; Urschel can

be a center. (Miles) Dieffenbach, he'll learn how to snap the ball but he's primarily a guard. Mac

(McWhorter) does a great job of teaching tackles how to play guard. Some guys play all five positions,

which is really extraordinary, and so we train a lot of guys to be center. But those three guys that I

mentioned at the beginning will be battling for the center job.

Q. With a year under your belt, can you generally assess how much more comfortable and

confident you are with the benefit of a year?

COACH O'BRIEN: Definitely more comfortable. I don't know if I was ever confident. I'm

definitely more comfortable. I understand the players better. I believe they understand us better. The

staff really understands how we work, how long we meet, when to meet, all those different things, what

our expectations are as a staff of each other and of the players.

I know how to get around better. I know how to get from Point A to Point B, even though it's

not that hard in State College, it's still new when you're brand new somewhere. I know people better;

people that I work with on a daily basis, they know me better. Maybe they are starting to figure out my

sense of humor, although, I don't know, sometimes I wonder, but things like that. So, I definitely feel

more comfortable, but definitely looking forward to getting going and watching how much better we

can get.

Q. Today is a big day in basketball. Are you allowed to fill out a bracket?COACH O'BRIEN: No. Don't even; that's.you're a bad guy for asking that question (smiles).

(Laughter).

Q. I believe you added another punter (Eli Skinner), but I think he might have been with

you since like last October? Am I correct in saying he's from the track team?COACH O'BRIEN: We have a number of guys that will help us in the kicking department.

Sam (Ficken) and Alex (Butterworth), going in, they will be our kicker and our punter. We have Eli

Skinner, Renny Parthemore, we have got a bunch of guys there.So there's a lot of guys there that are going to -- and then again, it's a whole different story about

who is in the 105 (players) for training camp. So what we do in the spring is bring a bunch of guys in

and see if some guys can help us and that's probably what you are seeing there.

Q. I was referencing Skinner; did you go out and try to bring him in?COACH O'BRIEN: No, he came over and tried out when we had our tryouts and we thought

there was some potential there, so that's why he's over there.

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