His voice shaking in anger, football coach Tom O’Brien responded Thursday to a series of verbal stabs by North Carolina interim head coach Everett Withers.
O’Brien exposed this rarely seen side of himself to reporters after football practice when they asked him about Withers’ comments on N.C . State football’s academic standards. Withers told Raleigh’s 99.9 “The Fan” Wednesday that potential recruits should recognize UNC as the “flagship school” in the state.
“When you have as many schools in this state as we have and the recruiting base gets watered down a bit, I think the kids in this state need to know the flagship school in this state,” Withers said. “They need to know it academically. If you look at our graduation rates, as opposed to our opponent’s this week, graduation rates for athletics, for football, you’ll see a difference… If you look at the educational environment here, I think you’ll see a difference.”
O’Brien, who responded to reporters after asking what Wither’s comments were about, began his response by first acknowledging his program’s faults.
“I would say this,” O’Brien said, “graduation rates certainly aren’t where we want them to be and it’s an ongoing process. Graduation rates are like the Titanic; it’s tough to turn around because it’s a six-year average.”
O’Brien then said the program’s graduation rates were recovering.
“You are talking about how many years ago? I know that we’ve turned ours around,” O’Brien said. “Our APR has bottomed out and it’s headed back to where it should be and certainly my record at Boston College and 15 years as a head coach stands on its own. I don’t know where that’s coming from.”
O’Brien then retaliated by referencing his rival’s NCAA trouble. Former Tar Heel defensive end Michael McAdoo was made permanently ineligible to play football after he received unauthorized assistance from a tutor and plagiarized a paper for a Swahili class, which UNC officials were unable to produce a syllabus for. Three other UNC football players were suspended for the 2010 season for academic fraud.
“At our school, number one, all classes have a syllabus,” O’Brien said. “Our guys go to school, they are not given grades, and they graduate.
“It’s a little tougher here if you have to go to school and you are expected to have a syllabus and go to class. Our guys earn everything that they get here. Certainly all of our graduates earn everything that they get at this University.”
O’Brien continued by bringing up UNC’s most recent troubles with the ongoing investigation by the NCAA, which is based in Indiana.
“I’m just going to coach my football team and I’m not going to coach his,” O’Brien said, “but as far as the flagship, here was a guy who was on a football staff that ends up in Indianapolis, that if you take three things that you can’t do in college football, you have an agent on your staff, you are paying players and you have academic fraud. That’s a triple play as far as the NCAA goes.”
The State coaching staff wasn’t the only group offended by Withers’ statements. Students all over campus took to social media to voice their opinions about the coach’s statement on the Raleigh airwaves.
Two students, in particular, showed their objection in a unique way. Sophomore in communications Luke Nadkarni and freshman engineer Nolan Evans showed their support for O’Brien by going to Withers Hall and taping a sign over it, which read “O’Brien Hall.”
Withers’ statements also made a bitter impression upon Student Body President Chandler Thompson.
“I think Wither’s comments were in poor taste,” Thompson said, “and I think that’s the reason I heard [a rumor] through the news that the chancellor of UNC called to apologize with Chancellor Woodson. I think, like Tom O’Brien said, Debbie Yow and all of our athletics directors are committed to improving graduation rates. It wasn’t an accurate comment.”
Chancellor Randy Woodson was not available to comment by phone but his assistant, Stephanie Parker, contacted Technician via email with a quote confirming the rumors to be true.
“Holden and I have a great relationship,” Woodson said in an email. “We talked this morning, exchanged apologies and we’re moving on.”
O’Brien urged the fans attending the game to be passionate but to be respectful to their Chapel Hill neighbors.
“As far as our crowd, there better not be anything in the stands,” O’Brien said. “We have a lot of dignity at this school and we have to show it. We can’t lower ourselves to retaliations or fights or anything stupid like that. Our people have to be there in the spirit of the game and root like crazy and play hard just as we’re going to play hard in the game. But after the game is over, let’s move on.”
