We first heard reports of this move on Friday, but Charles London has now officially accepted the position of running backs coach at Penn State, becoming the third coach officially on staff. London will head for State College on Tuesday, will have hopefully passed his NCAA recruiting test by then, and can get started on the Class of 2012.
London comes to Penn State as a 36 year old coach who has been through both the college and pro ranks, including a stint at Duke where he coached under Bill O'Brien as the running backs coach. His position with the Titans was as an offensive assistant and quality control coach, typically a coach on the sideline tasked with keeping all the players aware of what's going on, making sure the positional groups are ready and know their assignments, as well as game preparation each week.
Coach London is from the Georgia area, played college ball at Duke (including time on the Duke track team as a sprinter), and will hopefully bring some southern connections to Penn State.
Bill O'Brien's staff now has a running backs coach and a defensive line coach in Larry Johnson (though we still don't know if that is all Johnson will handle in 2012). Look for that number to increase rapidly, as ESPN's two-headed Big Ten blogger BennettRittenberg is reporting that O'Brien plans to have seven coaches in place by Wednesday, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Ron Musselman is hearing that another familiar name could possibly be retained.