Coach set to depart
BC's O'Brien will take N.C. State job
By Mark Blaudschun, Globe Staff | December 7, 2006
In a whirlwind courtship, which officially did not begin until yesterday morning and could be completed today, Boston College football coach Tom O'Brien is expected to accept an offer to become the next coach at North Carolina State.
Barring any snags, the announcement could come as soon as today, but might be delayed until tomorrow as final details are worked out.
According to several sources in the Atlantic Coast Conference, N.C. State athletic director Lee Fowler had received permission to talk to O'Brien, and while no official offer was made yesterday, it may be only a formality of getting approval from the school's Board of Trustees.
Reached at home last night, OBrien reiterated that he had received no official offer and would only say, "Any announcement has to come out of North Carolina."
O'Brien's public interest in openings was muted as he prepared his team for its Meineke Car Care Bowl appearance against Navy Dec. 30. "I'm not a candidate for any job," said O'Brien in a statement Tuesday when published reports named him as a candidate at Arizona State and Stanford.
O'Brien may have been playing semantics. He was not seeking jobs, but didn't deny that he would listen. Until yesterday, no official contact had been made. The possibility of O'Brien leaving BC has reached the decision-making stage only twice in his 10 seasons. In 2002, Georgia Tech made official contact and interviewed O'Brien before naming Chan Gailey coach. In 2004, O'Brien was a finalist at Washington, before withdrawing his name. (The Huskies hired Tyrone Willingham.)
The N.C. State situation is intriguing because it would be a move within the conference, which is rare.
The Wolfpack went into search mode after firing Chuck Amato following a 3-9 season, one of the wins being a last-minute victory over BC. N.C. State has state-of-the-art facilities, an admissions policy that would allow a wider range of student-athletes, and can pay its coach considerably more than the $733,626 O'Brien is making, according to a list of salaries published in USA Today citing IRS records, although BC officials say that figure is inaccurate. The Raleigh campus is also a four-hour drive from O'Brien's summer home in the Charleston, S.C., area.
O'Brien's success at BC has been steady but not spectacular. The Eagles are 9-3 this season, have not had a losing season since 1998, and have reached eight consecutive bowl games (winning the last six), including the Meineke Car Care Bowl against Navy, whose coach, Paul Johnson, also had been contacted by N.C. State.
But O'Brien has not gotten the Eagles to the conference championship and Bowl Championship Series bowl level. In 2004, the Eagles had a chance to win the Big East title and earn a Fiesta Bowl bid, but lost their last regular-season game to Syracuse. And in each of the last two seasons, the Eagles had a good shot to reach the ACC title game but fell just short.
If O'Brien leaves, the next step will be finding his successor, a task that falls to athletic director Gene DeFilippo, who will get the opportunity to make his first major hire at The Heights.
One name that immediately surfaced is former Notre Dame coach Bob Davie, whom DeFilippo coached as a player at Youngstown State. Davie would make a splashy first hire for DeFilippo, but it would likely come at a price far higher than the salary O'Brien reportedly earned.
DeFilippo could go to the NFL, which was how the Eagles found Tom Coughlin in 1990, then an assistant with the Giants under Bill Parcells. One potential candidate is Steelers quarterbacks coach Mark Whipple, the former University of Massachusetts coach who led the Minutemen to a Division 1-AA national title.
Harvard coach Tim Murphy, who previously had coached at Maine and Cincinnati, could emerge as a potential prospect as would several in-house candidates: associate head coach Jerry Petercuskie, defensive coordinator Frank Spaziani, and offensive coordinator Dana Bible.
Reached in Dallas last night where he was recruiting, Petercuskie was asked if he would be interested in succeeding his boss. "For me, first off, the loyalty that I have to Tom is No. 1," said Petercuskie. "I haven't even spoken to him about any of this, so before I answer any question like this, I'd first have to communicate with him and I haven't done that yet."
Michael Vega of the Globe staff contributed to this report; Mark Blaudschun can be reached at
blaudschun@globe.com.
© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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