CHICAGO — While the drives from his home in Pasadena to high school at Gilman up in Roland Park were often inconvenient, it was there Brian Gaia started forging the mentality that would make him a three-year starter on the Penn State offensive line.
During a career with the Greyhounds in which he won three Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference titles and was an All-Metro and All-State selection, Gaia usually had four hours of homework on top of his football practice and a drive that would sometime stretch up to 90 minutes depending on the traffic between Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County.
So when he had to adjust to the collegiate rigors in State College, Pa., things went smoothly on the school side of things.
"It just was a breeze. … I was used to that late-night grind, early morning wake up," Gaia said Monday at the Big Ten Conference media days. "It helped me with the transition.
Gaia is far removed from that change, among others — he played defensive tackle in his redshirt freshman season in 2013 before switching to offensive line as a redshirt sophomore — and is now facing down his final season of college football. He's appeared in 37 games and started 25 as a Nittany Lion and in the process has gone from a wide-eyed freshman to a stalwart on an offensive line that was maligned at times last season.
But there's still one more transition to face.
Penn State let go of offensive coordinator John Donovan in November and hired Fordham coach Joe Moorhead in December. Moorhead is bringing an up-tempo, no-huddle offense that put up gaudy numbers with the Rams, and Gaia is expected to be a key part of an offensive line blocking for mobile quarterbacks Trace McSorley and Tommy Stevens — who are battling for the starting quarterback job — along with a stable of running backs that includes standout sophomore Saquon Barkley.
Barkley broke the Penn State freshman rushing record with 1,076 yards in 11 games, and his 97.8 yards per game ranked third in the Big Ten. He's expected to back up that performance with veterans Mark Allen and Andre Robinson and highly regarded incoming freshman Miles Sanders.
In front of all of them, Gaia is confident he's picking up Moorhead's offense quickly.
"You can only block so many plays certain ways," Gaia said. "You can't reinvent the wheel in football. It's just buying in to how the coaches want you to block and what their attitude is."
The Penn State offensive line was decimated by the sanctions handed down by the NCAA in 2012 after the Jerry Sandusky scandal engulfed the university in 2011. During his opening remarks Monday afternoon, Nittany Lions coach James Franklin pointed out the team's roster has 17 scholarship offensive lineman as opposed to the nine it had when arrived in 2013.
Now that Penn State is back to 85 scholarships, Franklin has been able to build out the depth for a unit that struggled mightily last season. Nittany Lions quarterbacks were sacked 44 times in 2014 and 39 times last season. With more scholarship players on the roster, Gaia said the level of competition in practice his risen, which should, in turn, raise the level of play in games.
"Having all that talent that comes in each year makes that guy breathe down maybe the redshirt freshman's neck," Gaia said. "And then that guy's breathing down the guy in front of him and just making everyone get better every day."
Gaia made for a quick study when he went from a high school senior to a college freshman and again when he went from a member of the defensive line rotation to a starting offensive lineman. He'll have to do it again as a senior to help push Penn State past the seven-win ceiling it has hit the past three seasons.
And he knows that it starts in the trenches, where he plans to be week after week.
"Without us, it's not going anywhere," Gaia said. "If we don't block, no one's going to go anywhere."
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