Sitting in his fourth-floor corner office in the Wendell P. Murphy Center — with its vaulted ceiling, wall-mounted plasma TV, and panoramic view of Carter-Finley Stadium — O’Brien spoke at length Sunday afternoon, choking back the emotions at one juncture, about the reasons he decided to leave BC after 10 seasons and a 75-45 record, best in school history, to succeed Chuck Amato as N.C. State’s coach.
“If you saw this place 10 years ago, and you saw it as we walked into it this year, it’s night and day,” O’Brien said of his new surroundings. “The commitment to this program has been incredible. There’s a great passion here for football and these fans are the best in the state of North Carolina.”
After look back, O’Brien set to turn the page
Someone please send a note to Lee Fowler. A good number of those fans also read and post on the internet.
SFN Update:
A little more follow-up here. The N&O’s blog had a nice entry praising TOB for this interview and criticizing the greatest man and classiest coach in America. In this entry
Tom O’Brien met with Boston Globe reporter Michael Vega and talked about his decision to leave Boston College after 10 years.
He reiterated his reasons for coming to N.C. State. There wasn’t any earth-shattering news in the article, but it shows what type of person that O’Brien is that he took the time for a former beat reporter, and by extension the BC fan base, to explain his decision.
Under similar circumstances, Herb Sendek has repeatedly declined to speak with anyone from the N&O.
Looks like the N&O learned something that large majority of Wolfpackers learned through personal experiences in the last decade – if your name isn’t Wendell Murphy or one of the other Top 250 ranks in the Wolfpack Club, or if there isn’t any benefit for the man then Herb Sendek has zero interest in you. Some people refer to that is “personality” and chose to criticize Wolfpackers for having problems with this; most people refer to that as “character”.
