MIKE GROSS | Sports WriterBy Mike Gross
ATLANTA - Anthony Poindexter, Penn State’s safeties coach and currently its interim co-defensive coordinator, is a college football hall of famer.
He was inducted in 2021, but never really got to feel it until Wednesday, when Penn State attended a Peach Bowl event at the hall of fame, which is just a few blocks from Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the Nittany Lions will play Ole Miss Saturday.
“It’s kind of humbling,’’ Poindexter said Thursday, when he and a group of Penn State defensive players met the media. “It’s kind of embarrassing to me.’’
Poindexter, a two-time All-America safety at Virginia, was voted into the hall of fame in 2020 but, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, wasn’t inducted until a year later.
Even then, the ceremony was held in Las Vegas, and his parents couldn’t attend because his mother was recovering from open heart surgery.
He’d never been to the hall before. His wife, kids, parents and in-laws are all seeing it for the first time this week.
Until Wednesday, most of Penn State’s players didn’t even know he was a hall of famer.
“I don’t really talk about my career,’’ he said. “If they ask I’ll tell them, but most of them, these days, don’t really ask.’’
They could see Poindexter’s plaque Wednesday, and watch clickable video highlights of him smacking ballcarriers. He graduated as the leading career tackler along DBs in Atlantic Coast Conference history.
“They’d be like, oh, maybe he could play or something,’’ Poindexter said.
Professing humility is to be expected, of course, but Poindexter seems to live it. He was a serious candidate for head coach at his alma mater two years ago, when Virginia hired Tony Elliot. Poindexter considered it and interviewed for it, but eventually pulled himself out of the race.
“We all have aspirations to be a head coach,’’ Poindexter said then. “I just felt in my soul and in my heart that this wasn’t the right time.’’
When Penn State defensive coordinator Manny Diaz left after this season to become head coach at Duke, it would have been defensible to replace him with Poindexter.
He had been a DC at UConn (2014-16) and co-DC at Purdue (2017-20), and was of course well-versed in Diaz’ system, which had worked spectacularly.
James Franklin made Poindexter interim co-DC with Robb Smith, a former major-college DC who had been working for Franklin as an offensive analyst.
But Franklin hired Tom Allen, just fired as the head coach at Indiana. Allen is here observing, and will take over after Saturday’s game.
Poindexter has said he had “several conversations,’’ with Franklin about the DC job. Of course he wanted it, and of course he’s obliged to play the good soldier publicly about not getting it.
Again, though, Poindexter comes off as genuinely comfortable in his own skin, utterly comfortable being part of a team.
“(Allen) has been sitting in on the meetings, and, whenever you can lend a hand, you lend a hand,’’ Poindexter said.
“We don’t have egos like that. It’s been great having him sit in. I think he’s tried to give us respect, but we (say), please help us, chime in whenever.’’
Still, it has to be a little strange. A media member, treading carefully, asked Poindexter about a challenging but fairly common human experience: being part of an organization, applying for a better job within it, not getting it, and having to work daily with the guy who did.
“I got into coaching to help kids, and what I really want is to see them experience some of what I experienced,’’ Poindexter said.
Which brings us back to the College Football Hall of Fame.
“I don’t have to be in charge. I don’t have to be that guy. I just want to come to work and have a good time and do football.
“If (the players) can feel moments like that, if I can help them feel some of those moments, that’s all I really want.’’
