Two weeks after N.C. State’s football team finished the 2006 season 3-9 and just 13 days after former coach Chuck Amato was fired, the University announced the hiring of former Boston College coach Tom O’Brien.
O’Brien was officially hired and introduced to the media, the University’s Board of Trustees and others at the Murphy Center football complex on Dec. 9.
At the press conference O’Brien, who spent 10 years as the head coach at Boston College, discussed his decision to come to Raleigh, his goals, recruiting and his plans for assembling a staff.
He cited the enthusiasm and interest in football of the Wolfpack fans as major factors in his making the move.
“I’ve taken teams to State College [Pa.] and beaten Penn State there before 100,000 people. I’ve taken a team to Notre Dame when they were ranked fourth in the country and they came out in the green jerseys,” O’Brien said. “But the excitement on that fateful night when I was [in Carter-Finley] in September was as good as any place I’ve ever been.”
He also added despite his success at BC — winning eight or more games seven times and winning six consecutive bowl games — this move was not a lateral move or even a step down considering State’s recent struggles.
“It’s definitely a move up,” O’Brien said.
It’s also a move up in salary. According to The News & Observer, O’Brien signed a seven-year contract worth a minimum of $1.1 million per year with incentives that could boost it to $1.85 million a year.
At Boston College he earned $737,626 in 2006, which ranked him 10th out of the 12 football coaches in the ACC before the hiring of North Carolina coach Butch Davis, which bumped O’Brien to 11th, according to a salary survey by USA Today.
But for O’Brien, he said it was just the right time to make a move and he felt he had to take advantage of the new opportunity.
“Timing is everything,” he said. “If I was ever going to make a move, it was going to have to happen here in the next couple of years. So this is it.”
In a press conference 10 days after he was introduced as coach, O’Brien spoke more in depth about his process for assembling a staff. He said he hoped to have a staff in place and in Raleigh by Jan. 3.
He missed his Jan. 3 deadline, but did officially hire an offensive staff Jan. 5 — all former members of his staff at Boston College, including offensive coordinator Dana Bible.
Bible, who coached quarterbacks and receivers for the Pack from 1983 to 1985, was O’Brien’s offensive coordinator at BC for the past eight years.
One day after hiring his offensive staff, O’Brien added recruiting coordinator and special teams coach Jerry Petercuskie and the first member of his defensive staff — defensive line coach Keith Willis. Both coaches were on O’Brien’s staff at Boston College as well.
And Tuesday he hired Todd Rice to be the director of strength and conditioning — a position he held at BC for the past five years.
O’Brien said it was important to get his staff in place as soon as possible to get a jump on recruiting, especially in a new state and a new region.
“I want to start [recruiting] in North Carolina,” he said. “It’s most important that we start at home. We’re not going to drive past a kid in North Carolina just to take a kid out of Tennessee or somewhere.”
O’Brien said at his Dec. 19 press conference that his main recruiting focus up to that point had been on recruits who had previously committed to State under Amato.
