North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Sheridan Shares His Formula For Success
3/17/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
RALEIGH – Sitting at a front table at his first high school coaching clinic banquet Friday night, new NC State football coach Tom O’Brien took detailed notes as the keynote speaker spent more than an hour talking about his guidelines for running a successful program.
And if there is anyone who knows the specifics of putting winning football teams on the field at NC State, it’s Dick Sheridan.
That’s why O’Brien, who was hired as the Wolfpack’s coach in December, invited Sheridan, who was NC State’s head coach from 1986-92, to Vaughn Towers to speak to nearly 200 high school coaches from around the state, wrapping a clinic in conjunction with the start of NC State’s spring practice drills, which began Wednesday.
“It made sense to have Coach Sheridan come back here,” O’Brien said. “He had tremendous success. He did a lot for this university. He did a lot for the players.
“One of the things I found when I started to do some of the Wolfpack Club events during the winter was the tremendous respect and love his former players had for the man.”
O’Brien also had a strong working knowledge of Sheridan’s program from O’Brien’s time as an assistant and offensive coordinator at Virginia under George Welsh. That’s when Sheridan led the Wolfpack to six bowl games in seven years and was a regular contender in the ACC race.
“I always had a tremendous amount of respect for Coach Sheridan and his football teams, the way they played, the way they carried themselves and everything they did,” O’Brien said.
The respect is mutual, even though O’Brien and Sheridan had met only a few times before Friday.
“I have been an admirer from afar,” Sheridan said of the Wolfpack’s new coach, who spent 10 years at Boston College before he was hired following the Wolfpack’s 3-9 football season. “I have always been impressed. I still have a lot of people who I think of as mine here at NC State: Joe Pate, Bobby Purcell, David Horning, Eddie Gardner, Carolyn Stuart.
“They were all part of my staff, and they think a lot of him. If they do, I do. But I haven’t seen them practice, so I can’t say from first-hand knowledge. All I know are what I have heard from the people who are here and the results he has had on the field, which have been excellent.”
Sheridan spent more than an hour going through the guidelines of success he established when he first became a high school football coach in Orangeburg, S.C. Every summer before he began preseason practice, Sheridan would spend takes going over those principles with his staff, something he continued when he was a successful head coach at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., and in his seven years as head coach of the Wolfpack.
Included among his nearly two dozen guidelines were discipline, self-control, fundamentals, class, integrity, work ethic and unity.
Since O’Brien was hired, Wolfpack supporters have remarked that his program has marked similarities to the principles Sheridan used to become the second-winningest coach in NC State history, logging a 52-39-3 record over seven years. In 1986, he won both the ACC Coach of the Year and the Bobby Dodd Award as the national coach of the year, leading a Wolfpack team that had slogged through three consecutive 3-8 seasons to an 8-3-1 record and a berth in the New Peach Bowl in his first season as the Wolfpack’s coach.
He had winning seasons and post-season bids every year from 1988 to 1992. In each of his final two seasons, he guided the Wolfpack to nine regular-season wins, but lost to East Carolina in the Peach Bowl and Florida in the Gator Bowl.
“Those games still eat at me, because if we had won those games we would have finished ranked in the top 10,” Sheridan said.
Just prior to the 1993 season, Sheridan resigned because of health concerns, turning the program over to long-time assistant Mike O’Cain.
Much has changed in the 14 years since Sheridan last coached the Wolfpack, most significantly the more than $100 million in improvements and expansion to Carter-Finley Stadium. That includes the Murphy Center, enclosing both end zones with permanent grandstands, new practice fields and Vaughn Towers, which serves as the press box and contains luxury and premium club-level seating.
“This was a dream that [former athletics director and basketball coach] Jim Valvano and I had when we were here,” Sheridan said, looking over the refurbished stadium from Vaughn Towers. “We never could get anything going on it. It’s beautiful.
“It used to be so frustrating to feel like you were in great shape with a recruit and then he would go visit Clemson or North Carolina or some other school and his eyes would bug open from what he would see there. Now, I don’t think NC State would take a back seat to anybody. This is obviously the result of a lot of work by a lot of people, and my hats are off to them.”
But the 65-year-old Sheridan stopped short of giving specific advice to O’Brien about how to run a successful program.
“I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to offer him advice,” said Sheridan, who has lived in Surfside Beach, S.C., since retiring in 1993. “He knows what he is doing and he certainly doesn’t need anything from me. I have a lot of respect for him and I think he is going to do a wonderful job.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
