On a rainy day in May, thousands in the University community were gathered in the RBC Center for graduation, but not first-year football coach Tom O’Brien. O’Brien was out in the rain near the Murphy Center, jogging as usual despite the dreary weather.

Jogging six days a week – as he likes to do – requires a rain-or-shine commitment.

“As long as it’s not lightning and thunder,” O’Brien said. “They never called a war off for rain or snow or sleet, so Marines train in anything.”

O’Brien, a Naval Academy graduate and a Marine, often applies the same concise type of analysis to his team as he prepares for his first season with a program that won only three games in 2006.

He knows about the school’s bitter split with alumnus Chuck Amato, who won 34 games in his first four seasons but lost fan support after winning 15 contests the next three years. But more than anything he can do off the field, O’Brien knows it’s what he does on the field that will bring the fans together again.

“That’s the most important thing that they’re interested in is having a team they feel represents them, represents their ideals and represents the state of North Carolina, North Carolina State University,” O’Brien said. “So the best thing I can do is worry about things I can control, and that’s trying to make us the best football team in this conference. And that’s what I will do.”

Despite four bowl wins and five winning seasons in seven years, Amato was fired after the 2006 campaign.

O’Brien, though, said worrying too much about the fans won’t help him any.

“Best thing I can do is win football games,” O’Brien said. “And then we’ll all be happy.”

But O’Brien has also made a tangible effort to become part of the N.C. State football family. For the spring football game weekend, he invited back former players, and around 300 came back for a dinner that Friday.

He said it was an idea some of the program’s football alumni had suggested as a way to get them involved again, but he said it was also something that will help him do his job better.

“It’s good to get guys back to listen to stories about this, that and everything else. It gives you a sense of history because recruiting is all about selling the University,” O’Brien said. “It’s all about selling the players that came before and what their successes were, but the best part was they enjoyed it.”

Dana Bible, O’Brien’s offensive coordinator, was one of six assistants to come with the coach from Boston College to State after he took the job in December.

Bible, who has spent eight seasons with O’Brien, said his boss is well-equipped for any situation he might face in his new post.

“He’s a person of substance. What you see is what you get. He’s a man of his word. He’s honest. There are no secrets. It is, ‘This is the way we’re going to do it.’ And that’s the way we do it,” Bible said. “He is consistent, and he doesn’t waver when times get tough.”

O’Brien worked as an assistant at Navy and Virginia for coach George Welsh for a combined 22 years, from 1975-1996, before taking the job as BC’s coach before the 1997 season.

With so many of his assistants and two of his strength coaches changing schools with him, the coach has a much more familiar staff than he had when he started at Boston College. He said it’s hard to explain how he was able to convince so many assistants to join him.

“A lot of the guys I hire have same visions as I do of being a good student, being a good person, being a champion,” O’Brien said. “So when you hire people that have that same vision, they get in an environment that’s worker-friendly, and that’s why I stayed with Coach Welsh for 20-some years.”

Meanwhile, Welsh said O’Brien has a better understanding of football than most other coaches.

“He has all the characteristics of an outstanding coach, just a tremendous amount of energy, and he’s very bright and he works hard,” Welsh said. “He can see some things that most coaches can’t see.”

But one thing O’Brien won’t be seeing is last year’s tape. He said he’s not interested in looking at where the team fell short last season. Instead, he’ll make determinations based on what he sees now.

“It’s more important to go to the future because I wasn’t here in the past,” O’Brien said. “I can only make judgments on what we saw on our practice field, what we saw on the tape when we taped practice and went to evaluate it.”

Heading into fall practice, he was still in the process of making those evaluations. He was still searching for the players on whom he can rely and will continue to look for them as the season starts.

“When the boat starts to sink, who’s going to stay in and bale water and who’s going to bail out of the boat and get out of dodge?” O’Brien said. “Those are my biggest concerns right now is I don’t know who I can count on on this football team because we haven’t been in that pressure-cooker situation when guys are going to have to stand up and be counted.”

As for personal concerns, O’Brien said he has settled in well and has his family moved in. And with the experience of already having been a head coach and being able to bring many of his staff to State, he said the transition has been fairly smooth.

But even when the challenges come, O’Brien said he’ll stay grounded.

“Too many guys get in this profession and try to be somebody else … and when you’re trying to be somebody else, then you’re not doing what you have to do. So I’ve tried to be myself and tried to believe in the principles and ideals and moral and ethical values that I was taught as a child all the way through my education years,” O’Brien said. “And so the best thing I try to do is be who I am.”