North Carolina State University Athletics
Program Spotlight: O?Brien Shaping NCSU Football
9/10/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. – Do you really know NC State football coach Tom O’Brien?
Probably not.
Sure, you see the dour exterior, and it is not a façade. Twenty years with former Virginia coach George Welsh – the ACC’s favorite curmudgeon and once the league’s career leader in wins – can do that to a fellow.
But O’Brien, who is beginning his third year at the helm of the Wolfpack, is probably a little more fun-loving than you expect. Get him on the golf course, and he opens up a little. He’ll give you a hard time, maybe even talk in your backswing.
Put him in the car listening to XM Radio, and you can hear him mangle the lyrics of the best tunes from the 1970s and ‘80s.
Watch him with his family, and you will see a proud father looking for a way to embarrass his adult offspring, just as he did when they were little kids.
Check him out with other people’s kids, and you’ll see a guy who can’t wait to be a grandfather, spoiling the little ones and shipping them home with the parents to misbehave.
Have a beer with him – he’s Irish, he makes no apologies – and you might get an earful.
“It takes people a while to get to know him,” said his wife of 30 years, the former Jennifer Byrd. “People are amazed after a while that he is not really as stern as they expect.”
On the field, though, O’Brien is all business, and that’s what has made him successful during his prior 12 seasons as a head coach and his 20 years with Welsh at Navy and Virginia. He runs a tight ship, just what you would expect for a Naval Academy graduate and former Marine officer.
He frequently tells his charges: “It’s all about the mission and how you accomplish it.”
He expects his team to accomplish the mission by being disciplined, responsible and of good character. He puts just as much emphasis on serving the community – through Toys for Tots or with visits to the Wounded Warriors project – as he does the team’s off-season training regimen or its academic responsibilities.
He’s become a successful coach by enforcing that discipline, from superstars to walk-ons. Because of that, he’s been able to develop recruits others may not have noticed in successful players and people, whether they go on to the NFL or graduate with a degree they might have once thought unattainable.
Sometimes, that discipline can be hard but rewarding. Last year, defensive end Willie Young – arguably the most promising professional prospect in the program – needed a lesson. After starting the team’s first six games, O’Brien pulled him from the starting lineup and sat him on the bench at the beginning of the Florida State game.
Young responded with his best game of the season against the Seminoles, and was one of the defense’s most consistent performers during the Wolfpack’s four-game winning streak at the end of the regular-season. In January, when it came time to decide whether he would leave the program with one year of eligibility remaining for the NFL draft, Young opted to stay, figuring that one more year under O’Brien’s tutelage would make him an even better player and perhaps move him from a projected second-round pick into the first round.
“I think he is a great guy, even if I don’t always understand him,” Young said.
O’Brien called that decision the most important event of the off-season for the Wolfpack, who have high hopes of finishing atop the ACC’s Atlantic Division and advancing to the ACC Championship Game on Dec. 5 in Tampa, Fla.
Through the years, O’Brien has been particularly effective at keeping people in his program, especially his assistant coaches. He finds it is the best way to promote consistency.
“I just try to create a good working family environment for the assistants, so they can be successful,” O’Brien said. “I think they appreciate the fact that I try to make them be the best football coaches they can be, and in return, then we are going to have a pretty good football team if they are.”
That’s what has kept recruiting coordinator and special teams coach Jerry Petercuskie with the coach since O’Brien became the head coach at Boston College. The bond is so strong that Petercuskie, a Boston College graduate and a native of the Northeast, was one of the six assistant to leave that comfortable atmosphere and join O’Brien in Raleigh three years ago.
“The number one thing is that he is such a fair person when it comes to your family,” Petercuskie said. “He raised a great family, and you can see the fruits of his labor. It carries over to the extended family he is responsible for.”
Defensive coordinator Mike Archer is one of three “new” members of the staff, hired away from the Pittsburgh Steelers O’Brien took over the program. But the two are old friends. Right after Archer left his only head coaching job, he spent two years as an defensive line coach for George Welsh at Virginia. O’Brien not only was part of the same staff, he and Archer lived in the same neighborhood.
“Away from football and with our kids, I found out what kind of person he was,” said Archer. “That was important to me, the type of person I worked for. You have to be able to have give and take and have the ability to state your position. You have to have a person you can trust.
“Obviously, I trust Tom.”
With a contented coaching staff – hey, there is a reason the football staff has added seven new-born members to the Wolfpack Nation since its arrival – O’Brien has been able to push hard in transforming the program, by recruiting players he feels the staff can develop and instituting an attitude of success within the elegant walls of the Murphy Center.
While his record at NC State is 11-14, he has had to overcome decimating injuries and an overall lack of depth. But he has also seen players like sophomore quarterback Russell Wilson – the first freshman quarterback to ever win first-team All-ACC honors – grow and mature into productive players.
He has had to be patient while others on the roster – like Young before them – bought into his philosophies. But, to no one’s surprise, he hasn’t wavered from the successful structure he learned a long time ago under Welsh, who remains his advisor and mentor.
“The only thing you can do, really, as a coach is to continue to work the plan you have and know where you are headed,” O’Brien said. “All things will be paid off in the end if you have enough patience to see it through.
“I don’t pretend to have some perfect formula. I just know how I think things should be done.”
When he was first hired to be a head coach, nearly 15 years ago, O’Brien remembers reading something about the formula for success: ‘There is no sure formula for success, but there is a sure formula for failure: try to please everyone.’
“So, I don’t even try. I just do what I think is right.”
End the end, if the Wolfpack becomes as successful as his teams were at Boston College and at Virginia, everyone wearing NC State red and white will certainly be pleased.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
