Penn State athletic director Dr. David Joyner

Penn State athletic director Dr. David Joyner address the media about the coaching vacancy after Bill O'Brien took over for the Houston Texans. Joyner's tenure at Penn State will quietly come to an end this summer, reporter David Jones has learned.

(Joe Hermitt, PennLive, file)

Though no one candidate has emerged as his successor, it appears Dave Joyner's tenure as the Penn State athletics director is about to quietly conclude, roughly concurrent with that of the president with whom he arrived.

Amid reports that Northwestern AD Jim Phillips has been targeted as at least one favorite to succeed Joyner, I've learned through several university sources that, while new PSU president Eric Barron has not decided on a successor, it's been decided that Joyner will not stay on and his departure will soon be announced, possibly by the end of this week. That, in itself, is something of a landmark moment for Penn State athletics.

My texts and calls to Joyner today were not answered. But it's accurate to say that I've found him responsive and cordial throughout his very difficult stint as AD.

Certainly, Joyner will be remembered as the man who ran the ship, for better or worse, through its most turbulent waters – in the 2½ years following the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. His legacy will be attached to the hiring of two football coaches, one a consensus home run, the other an early fan favorite whose results are to be determined.

For some inside the Penn State athletic offices, Joyner will represent an impersonal style and sometimes dictatorial method that could chafe. For others, he was the former All-American wrestler, the linear thinker, who simply made necessary decisions as he saw fit.

It would probably not be accurate to say Joyner had a lot of fans among the school's 31 varsity sport coaches. Then again, the relationship is often strained between bean-counting athletics directors and hot-blooded coaches in most high-major college athletic programs. The paradox of coaches is that they are leaders but they also want to be led – or at least communicated with. In that vein, Joyner could be judged less than ideal as an AD.

And among those who revered the late former football coach Joe Paterno, he will always be painted soot black as one of the trustees who voted to fire him in the Sandusky maelstrom's immediate wake. Their zealous stance is, of course, intractable by any means.

Personally, I always found Joyner to be reasonable in our dealings if occasionally obtuse and hyper-analytic in the manner of the former orthopedic surgeon he was. I thought it was more that demeanor that got him booed by fans during various game introductions and carped about by coaches as much as any decisions he made. I thought he strode into an infernal situation when asked by then-president Rodney Erickson and did the best he could – admirable in itself considering the prevalent atmosphere.

A good illustration is his most important decision of all – the hiring of Bill O'Brien as Paterno's successor in January 2012. It can be questioned as a perfect hire only by the truly combative or those who contend it was actually driven by heavyweight donors Terry Pegula and his former wrestling buddy Ira Lubert.

The fact is, O'Brien was the best possible man to lead the program at the worst possible time and Joyner pulled the trigger. And, after O'Brien departed for the NFL, the search process and subsequent hiring of James Franklin was all Joyner's.

Beyond the volatility of its period, Joyner's tenure likely marks the type of transition that has been seen at many large college athletic programs – between the rubber-stamp function of predecessor Tim Curley and what could be a more marketing and metrics-oriented hire in the mold of Michigan State's trend-setter AD Mark Hollis.

Over are the days of former football players, of whom Joyner and Curley were two in Paterno's early classes, ascending to the athletic director post as a mere right of passage. The name of the game now is finding creative revenue streams through non-stop promotion.

Joyner was not perfect. But nothing else at Penn State during his stint was close to ideal, either. That he even took the job at a time when many would not have touched it is, in my mind, to his eternal credit.

DAVID JONES: djones@pennlive.com.