Boston College Athletics
Humbly, Quietly, O'Brien Reaches Coaching Milestone
September 15, 2006 | Football
Sept. 15, 2006
It's been a losing battle. Ever since his team stunned 18th-ranked Clemson in a double-overtime thriller, BC Head Coach Tom O'Brien tried to deflect the attention away from himself and onto his team while it was preparing to face BYU. Yet no one can ignore the fact that O'Brien has now reached a milestone.
With Saturday's double-overtime win over BYU, O'Brien, whose record stands at 69-42, now stands alone atop the school's all-time football coaching victories list, surpassing Joe Yukica, who went 68-37 from 1968-77. But you didn't hear it from him.
His humility is as genuine and detectable as is his distaste for his old Navy nemesis, Army. He's fiercely patriotic and was, and always will be, one of the few, the proud, a Marine. When local beat writers Mike Vega and Steve Conroy visited his office earlier this week, O'Brien showed them a diagram of the path a Boeing 757 took before it hit the Pentagon five years ago on September 11. He pointed to the spot where his brother, Sean, was sitting that day, about the length of a football field away from the impact. He seemed to find his brother's good fortune that day much more remarkable than the record within his grasp.
"Tom," one of the writers says, "you're on the verge of..."
"I'm on the verge of nothing," O'Brien says. "We're getting ready to play BYU."
So he is humble, and he is, to the dismay of some, a quiet man. If there are fans - and there are - who are looking for a man who will throw a visor or two, a la Steve Spurrier, or charm them with an "aw shucks" Bobby Bowden slap on the back, they should look elsewhere. That's not Tom O'Brien, and he owes no explanations. The man is a winner.
Just look at the facts. O'Brien's teams have gone to seven bowl games in a row and have won six straight, the longest active streak in the country. The 2005 team finished 5-3 in its first year in the Atlantic Coast Conference, tying eventual champion Florida State for first place in the league's Atlantic Division. It was ranked in the top 25 in at least one of the polls from start to finish and, when USA Today re-ordered the final 2005 football Top 25 by APR (Academic Progress Rate) score to measure a combination of athletics and academic success, it was ranked number one in the country.
BC won the American Football Coaches' Association's 2004 Academic Achievement Award with a 100 percent graduation rate and has received Honorable Mention status seven additional times during O'Brien's tenure. He has won nine games for the third time in four years; eight or more games for the fifth year in a row and sixth time in seven years; and seven or more games for a school-record seventh year in a row.
Boston College is, first and foremost, an outstanding academic institution. In size and stature, it ranks right up there with football-playing brethren Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Wake Forest, Northwestern and others. While all those institutions have had varying levels of football success through the years, Boston College's consistent combination of academic and athletic success under O'Brien have become something special.
O'Brien's motto of developing champions on the field, in the classroom and in the community is not just lip service. When they're not practicing or studying, his players spend countless hours visiting hospitals or reading to children. And oh, yes - they win football games.
He is respected by his peers. "When I think about Tom O'Brien," says Virginia Tech Head coach Frank Beamer, "I think about solid and consistent. His football teams are like that, well prepared, well coached and tough. They play with a consistency that I think comes from the head coach, and they usually play the same way week-in and week-out regardless of who they are playing. I'm certainly not surprised that he's won all those games at Boston College, because I think he is a really good football coach and a good person."
Every team has its share of Web site whiners, and BC is no exception. "The fellowship of the miserable," as one coach likes to call them, will forever point to a loss here or there, playing the woulda', shoulda', coulda' game. That's their loss. The reasonable majority of Boston College fans point with pride to a program that doesn't bend the rules, that graduates its players, and that exhibits class. They have rejoiced in the big wins, and there have been many. The green jersey game at Notre Dame. The bowl game win over Georgia. The past two seasons against Clemson. The road upsets at Virginia Tech and West Virginia. The Tony Gonzalez catch at Notre Dame. Heck, all five of the wins over Notre Dame.
How does he do it? Ask his players, his staff, his colleagues and, to a man, they will tell you. He is fair. He is honest. He instills discipline. You always know where you stand. He keeps things in perspective, win or lose.
He is a devout family man; there are pictures of his kids, all BC graduates, scattered around his office. He'd much rather talk about daughter Colleen's job at ESPN or Bridget's mission in Ecuador or son Dan's gig on the Harvard staff than his own legacy as a coach. And there's a side of him those of us on the inside see, the side some on the outside don't seem to recognize. The man is warm, and personable, and funny, fun-loving and kind, all wrapped up in a no-nonsense shell.
Assistants usually need a break to get a head coaching job, and in late 1996 Boston College football was, well, broken. A gambling scandal had rocked and embarrassed the program, so President William P. Leahy, S.J., called up the Marine who had been a member of George Welsh's staff at Virginia since 1982. When he named O'Brien BC's 32nd head football coach on Dec. 13, 1996, Leahy said "I am not only confident he will be highly successful at Boston College, but I believe he will live out, in his life and in his work, the traditions and values of this great Jesuit university."
Leahy, O'Brien and Director of Athletics Gene DeFilippo have worked hand-in-hand to change the landscape of BC football, both literally and figuratively. Witness the $27 million Yawkey Athletics Center, the millions of dollars in improvements and enhancements to Alumni Stadium, Shea Field, the practice bubble, scholarship endowments - the list goes on and on. Suffice it to say, thanks to Leahy, DeFilippo and O'Brien, the head coaching position at Boston College in September of 2006 is a much, much better job than it was in December of 1996.
"Tom has done an excellent job with our football program," DeFilippo says. "There's no denying his record on the field, in the classroom and in other areas. We're tremendously proud of him and the entire football program."
Just as Doug Flutie put BC football on the map 22 years ago, Tom O'Brien has undeniably molded the program into his own image, one of dignity, class, humility and excellence.
But you didn't hear it from him.
