New Penn State RB coach Stan Drayton didn’t plan on coaching football but two guys saw it different
Much like another coach in Penn State history named Joe Paterno, Drayton once pictured himself as a lawyer.
But his head coach and offensive coordinator at Allegheny College looked at their running back and thought: “This guy is a coach.”
Considering Drayton played his last college game more than 32 years ago and has been coaching ever since, it’s safe to say Ken O’Keefe and Joe Philbin knew what they were talking about.
Penn State head coach James Franklin may owe O’Keefe, who went onto be Iowa’s offensive coordinator for 13 season, and Philbin, who won a Super Bowl running the Green Bay Packers’ offense in the 2010 season, some gratitude, too
Because Drayton is good at his job— he has two national titles to prove it— and now he’s working at Penn State.
‘THEY LOOKED AT ME AND LAUGHED
Drayton thought he had his profession figured out.
He was gonna finish playing college football, then it was off to law school.
Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way, and O’Keefe and Philbin are the reasons for that.
“I told them I was going to be a lawyer,” Drayton told Penn State play-by-play man Steve Jones in an exclusive interview. “They looked at me and laughed and said ‘you’re a football coach, you just don’t know it.”
How did Drayton respond to that?
“I said, well, please, tell my Mom and my Dad,” he said, “because if they hear (that I’m) getting ready to coach after them paying for some schooling, I don’t think that’s going to go too well.”
Who knows how well things would have turned out if Drayton became a lawyer but it’s hard to argue that he didn’t make the right call.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.He became Allegheny’s running backs coach the year after graduation in 1993, and the rest is history.
“It was all about Ken O’Keefe and Joe Philbin giving me that dry board and marker and said ‘here’s how you draw a circle and here’s how you learn a progression,” Drayton said. “Me learning that way made it real clear to me that it’s progression-type teaching that’s going to get an individual to learn at a high level.”
‘LISTEN AND ADJUST’
Photo by Matt Lynch, Nittany Sports Now: Nicholas Singleton
Drayton is going to be coaching all kinds of backs in his first season at Penn State.
He’ll be coaching Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen, who are established stars.
He’ll be coaching Corey Smith and Quinton Martin, who got their feet wet as true freshmen last season.
He’ll be coaching Tikey Hayes, a true freshman looking to prove that he belongs in the Big Ten.
All of these players have different skills, experience levels and personalities, and Drayton understands this.
“The thing about that is, not everybody is going to learn the same, right?” he said. “You have to be able to listen and adjust. You have to find the proper way for a student-athlete to learn the proper way. You may have different types of learners in your room and you have to maximize your teaching and spend the proper time that it takes for certain individuals to learn what you’re teaching. There’s no cookie-cutter way to do it, right? You just have to figure it out as a teacher. I think that’s what makes great teachers is those who have found ways to mix and adjust their messages to make sure everyone’s getting what they’re being taught.”
Penn State opens the 2025 season Aug. 30 against Nevada at Beaver Stadium.
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