BY TIM PEELER
DURHAM, N.C. – When NC State football coach Tom O’Brien was asked about his favorite hobby, he went in a different direction than the other three Triangle football coaches sitting with him on the dais Thursday afternoon at the sixth-annual Triangle Pigskin Preview, sponsored by the area chapter of the National Football Foundation.
North Carolina’s Butch Davis ‘fessed up to playing a little golf. North Carolina Central’s Mose Rison admitted that he still loved racquetball, even though he might be aging out of it. And new Duke coach David Cutcliffe said he liked to do a little bass fishing, especially if he could find a over-stocked private pond.
O’Brien, a regular runner and an avid golfer, ignored listing either of those as his preferred pastime. Instead, the empty-nest father said he gets his most enjoyment these days out of embarrassing his three adult children.
In fact, he has some special plans for his youngest daughter, Bridget, when the family gets together next weekend at the coach’s beach house near Charleston, S.C.
“The movie ‘Mama Mia’ is coming out and my youngest will die...” O’Brien said. “When we went to see it live on stage in New York, I stood up and sang. She kept saying, ‘Dad, will you sit down?’ She told me I can’t do that in a movie theater.
“We’ll see.”
Later, O’Brien owned up to his ABBA addiction: “‘Dancing Queen’ is just hard to sit down to.”
Of course, just about the time Bridget gets over her red face, her dad will likely be down to business, gearing up for his second season as the head coach of the Wolfpack. Practice begins in just two weeks and the season-opener at South Carolina kicks off in exactly six weeks.
By then, O’Brien no doubt will be as serious as ever about football. His inaugural team went 5-7 last season, rebounding from a 1-5 start to win four straight games in the second half of the season, including wins over East Carolina, Virginia and Miami.
While he’s pumped for the season – “I think we are way ahead of where we were a year ago,” he said Thursday – O’Brien is mostly focused on just one thing: the Aug. 28 season-opener against the Gamecocks and USC coach Steve Spurrier. The 8 p.m. game will be ESPN’s first Thursday night broadcast of the season.
“We are really looking forward to it,” said O’Brien. “It’s a good game for our program. It’s nice to be the first game on TV, to be able to see how we were and how far we have come in a year. I think there will be a little more attention paid to this game because of the opponent and the stage that we are on.”
While some coaches may prefer to start with a less daunting opener than a road game against a Southeastern Conference opponent, O’Brien thinks that preparing for the Gamecocks has kept his team more focused since last season ended.
“We have always done better when we have played a big game first,” O’Brien said. “I think it makes your spring practice, your off-season and your pre-season camp much more important.”
But, even with a healthy roster for the first time since just prior to the opening of fall drills last August, the 12-year head coaching veteran knows there is some work to be done. O’Brien still has concerns about his offensive line's ability to dominate the line of scrimmage, his defense’s ability to stop the run and his team’s overall depth.
He’ll talk more about that this weekend when he and players Jeremy Gray and Anthony Hill travel to Greensboro, Ga., for the annual ACC Football Kickoff, in which coaches and players from all 12 schools in the league meet with media from around the nation to talk about the upcoming season.
Look for extended coverage of the three-day event from Reynolds Plantation on GoPack.com.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
Courtesy: Tim Peeler
