Bill OâBrien inherits a Penn State football program reeling from the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal. The team is facing a four-year bowl ban and scholarship reductions.  STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Every morning, Bill and Colleen O’Brien know their older son, 10-year-old Jack, will have a seizure when he wakes up. It could last 30 seconds or go on for 30 minutes, necessitating an ambulance trip to the hospital. There may be more seizures during the day, depending on disparate factors like weather patterns and Jack’s growth spurts. And when they happen, the O’Briens can do little except to turn their son on his side and wait for the seizure to end.  The O’Briens face daunting challenges every day that have nothing to do with scholarship restrictions, a bowl ban or reviving the sullied reputation of the Penn State football program. In a college town where perspective has become a buzz word in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal, O’Brien, the Nittany Lions’ new coach, and his family have plenty of experience in keeping it.  “Obviously the challenges that they’ve had, those are far greater challenges than what’s going to come down the road professionally,” said Syracuse Coach Doug Marrone, Bill O’Brien’s best friend. “I know that the football situation now is a great challenge, and people have their perspective on it, but they go through great challenges every single day.”  Bill O’Brien has an Ivy League education and more than a dozen years as a college assistant, and he took a salary cut of more than 50 percent at age 37 in order to be a glorified film grunt for the New England Patriots. Yet what has shaped him and his wife most has been their experience with Jack, who has a rare genetic brain malformation known as lissencephaly. Jack O’Brien moves around only by wheelchair or commando crawling on his belly and has severely limited motor planning, meaning the brain is slow to tell the body what to do.  “In a way, it was one of the best things that ever happened to us,” Bill O’Brien said of Jack’s diagnosis. “It added so much perspective to our lives. We figured out what was important, and it brought us closer together and put in perspective the importance of football.”  The O’Briens say they refuse to dwell on what Jack cannot do. Instead they rave about Jack’s dancing to Michael Jackson songs, his resilience in the face of his daily seizures and the way he smiles and rubs his belly in excitement when he sees his mom and his brother, 7-year-old Michael. Colleen O’Brien beams when talking about Jack’s smile, his love of fire trucks and his calm demeanor.  “Unfortunately,” Colleen said, “with what he has, there’s not a lot you can do about it.”  Very little time is spent feeling sorry for themselves.  “Millions of families go through this,” Bill O’Brien said. “Hopefully by doing stuff like this, we can help other families feel better about their situation. I don’t want people to think we’re the only family going through this. We’re not saying, Woe is us.”  Going All In, for the Long Run  In the wake of the Sandusky scandal, the N.C.A.A. imposed punishments on the football team, including a four-year bowl ban and severe scholarship restrictions, that could have lingering effects for the next decade. Already, more than a dozen players — including those already on the roster, recruits who had signed letters of intent and others who had made commitments — have transferred or decided not to go to Penn State in the wake of the scandal and the sanctions.  That includes the star tailback Silas Redd, the foundation of Penn State’s already shaky offense, and the top offensive line recruit Dorian Johnson. The bowl ban lasts through the 2015 season, and the scholarship restrictions could keep the team from having the normal allotment of 85 scholarship players until 2020.  This is Bill O’Brien’s professional reality. His brother Jack O’Brien said that Bill was handling the sanctions with a familiar temperament, refusing to dwell on what he could not control.  Ten years ago, Bill O’Brien was an assistant at Maryland and recruiting in New Jersey when his wife called and told him to come home immediately. A doctor at Johns Hopkins had found that Jack, then almost 1, had lissencephaly. Despite being told not to, she had Googled the disorder and read some particularly grim outlooks.  This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:  An earlier version of this article erroneously referred to Dorchester as an enclave situated just outside Boston.  An earlier version of this article erroneously referred to Dorchester as an enclave situated just outside Boston.
Long before Bill OâBrien chose to lead the rebuilding of Penn State football, he had already been dealt a far greater challenge.