Bill O’Brien has decided to stay at Penn State hours after word leaked that he had interviewed with the Cleveland Browns, a source close to the situation told Yahoo! Sports.

Bill O'Brien has decided to stay at Penn State for at least one more season. (AP)The decision to pull his name out of consideration ends a week of uncertainty as the first-year Nittany Lions coach was floated with a number of NFL openings and caused a measure of concern back in State College.

The contracts for O'Brien and his assistants are expected to be reworked and will include a pay raise, a source said.

Penn State went 8-4 this season in dealing with the shock of massive NCAA sanctions leveled against the program stemming from the Jerry Sandusky scandal. They included a four-year postseason ban, four years of significant scholarship reductions and other penalties that made the program's future uncertain.

Sources said the level of the penalties stunned O’Brien, who had arrived from the staff of the New England Patriots to succeed legendary coach Joe Paterno.

While O’Brien,

On Wednesday, the NCAA called a federal lawsuit by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett over severe sanctions against the Penn State football program an "affront to all of the victims in this tragedy – lives that were destroyed by the criminal actions of Jerry Sandusky."

However, one of those victims, so-called Victim No. 4 who was abused by Sandusky for years on the Penn State campus, has never supported the way the NCAA handled the case, according to his attorney.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett gestures while speaking at a news conference. (AP)

Moreover, the attorney, Benjamin D. Andreozzi of Harrisburg's Andreozzi & Associates blasted the NCAA for trying to play the role of victim and never asking Sandusky's actual victims their opinion in the case. Perhaps most egregious, it assumed that the victims would find Corbett's lawsuit, but not the NCAA's actions, as an "affront." That allowed the NCAA to essentially use the real victims as a public relations tool without any knowledge of whether the assertion was accurate.

"Victim No. 4 was very disappointed when

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett announced Wednesday that the state will file a federal antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA for placing heavy sanctions against Penn State football over its handling of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

It's a lawsuit that while serving as an intriguing challenge to the NCAA's power also appears to be an act of political grandstanding that actually might make college sports' governing body look sympathetic.

Tom Corbett speaks at a news conference on the Penn State campus. (Reuters)

This is politicians v. bureaucrats. Good luck picking a side.

Penn State itself is not party to the lawsuit and Corbett isn't even using the state's attorney general's office to file the claim. He'll instead use his office's outside counsel and an additional law firm.

Corbett is seeking no monetary judgment, just an injunction against sanctions that call for, among other things, scholarship reductions and a four-year postseason ban. He cites the economic impact of a weakened Nittany Lion program's effect on businesses in the State College area.

INDIANAPOLIS – After the roaring crowds and the emotional victory, after the wild postgame celebration and the poignant news conference on Sunday, Chuck Pagano stepped into a quickly emptying Indianapolis Colts locker room. Andrew Luck passed for 4,374 yards and 23 TDs in his rookie year. (Scott Halleran/Getty Images)

The coach who'd spent the fall in the hell of chemotherapy, only to dramatically return to duty, was surrounded by a small crowd of well-wishers – Colts players, Colts employees, even Colts media looking to give him a congratulatory hug or a quick welcome back.

Out of the corner of his eye, Pagano noticed Andrew Luck was still packing up at his locker. Pagano broke free from the group and headed over. They shared a hug, a smile and a few quick words before exchanging a loud hand slap. They each looked excited at the challenge ahead, namely at the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday in the wild-card round of the playoffs.

"Just go play," Pagano advised Luck, and maybe that's as complex as it needs to be with the pre-naturally mature Stanford product.

The reason Oregon coach Chip Kelly has become, if not the NFL’s hottest coaching candidate, then its most intriguing is as simple as the box score from the New England-San Francisco game a couple weeks back.

Chip Kelly is 45-7 in four seasons as head coach at Oregon. (Getty)

That night, the New England Patriots ran 92 offensive plays in a loss to San Francisco. It was an unusual game, with New England needing a huge second-half comeback, and thus Tom Brady to chuck it around just to make it a game, but still … 92 snaps is 92 snaps.

For three decades the average number of offensive plays per team in the NFL has hung around the low to mid 60s. This year it's 66.8. Yet here was New England, threatening 100 with a season-high 92, but also part of a season trend. The Patriots are averaging a league-high 74.4 snaps per game, up dramatically from 67.2 just a year ago.

In short, the Patriots are playing fast this year; really, really fast. Fast like one of those dynamic college offenses that blur your vision despite not having the kind of

There is the year in sports and there is the year in being a sports columnist. With one of the great jobs in America – Yahoo! Sports national columnist – I get to witness many of the greatest (and lowest) moments of the year. Of course, it's often the side stories and simple people that stand out most.

So this isn't a conclusive review of the year. There's no mention of NBA or baseball, for instance. It is my annual year-in-columns review, with more of a liner-notes style this time – from Pennsylvania court rooms, to French Quarter steakhouses, to London boxing halls, to Super Bowl locker rooms.

As always, I never take a moment of this opportunity for granted. It's a job, but it hardly constitutes work. And my goal remains fairly simple: I don't expect readers to agree with every column, just to appreciate that I wrote them after trying to provide access or information that the job provides.

Here are 15 columns (of the 200 plus written), presented in calendar

INDIANAPOLIS – First they danced. Then they laughed. Then they prayed. Then Jim Irsay, the owner of these improbable, impossible 11-5 Indianapolis Colts, held a game ball and addressed a postgame locker room equal parts elation and emotion. Chuck Pagano is greeted by family members after the Colts' win. (AP)

Standing in front of him was Chuck Pagano, the man he hired not 12 months ago in part because of his toughness; who in turn had proven tougher than even Pagano himself believed possible.

Most of the season had been spent down the street, in a cancer center, getting chemo pumped into him and then medicine to deal with the chemo and then medicine to deal with the medicine to deal with the chemo. And then more medicine after that.

He lost weight. He lost hair. He found tears. He found people in worse shape, with bigger challenges. He found humility in his good fortune … "treatable cancer" and, even better, treatable cancer that struck him, not his children. At the bottom, sometimes there is so much reason to be thankful.

He found

INDIANAPOLIS – A Sony Bravia LCD television hangs just outside the visiting locker room of Lucas Oil Stadium. Sunday afternoon, after Indianapolis had dismantled Houston 28-16, giving the once high-flying Texans their third loss in four games, the TV was set on the NFL's RedZone Channel.

It was the ideal (or perhaps less than ideal) way for the Houston players who stopped to grab some lunch for the flight home to see spinning scoreboards in Denver and Foxborough and have their new, self-created reality get pounded home.

Dejected Texans RB Justin Forsett watches from the bench late in the second half. (AP) The once white-hot, 11-1 Texans, a shoo-in for top seed in the AFC and a Super Bowl favorite, are now the coldest playoff team in the league.

Against the Colts, they displayed an offense that can't find the end zone, a defense that can't get off the field and a special teams group that gave up a momentum-changing, 101-yard kickoff return for a score. All of that and way too many penalties. Again.

Meanwhile, the Sony showed Denver and New England