Bill O’Brien: Penn State football, community ‘meant a lot to me’

Bill O’Brien will lean heavily on his experience with the Penn State football program in his new role at Boston College, the Eagles head coach recently said in an interview. Sitting down with Pete Thamel for ESPN’s College GameDay podcast, O’Brien looked back fondly on his two seasons in Happy Valley and highlighted the importance of the Penn State community in helping keep the football program intact. The former Nittany Lions head coach also discussed how his experiences with roster management in the sanctions era helped to prepare him for the transfer portal in today’s college football.

Bill O’Brien will apply lessons learned from Penn State at Boston College

In one of the more interesting moves of the college football offseason to date, former Penn State football coach Bill O’Brien will take over as the new Boston College head coach in 2024, less than a month after being named the Ohio State offensive coordinator. The move marks O’Brien’s first opportunity to lead a college program since leaving the Nittany Lions at the end of the 2013 season.

Although brief, O’Brien says his tenure in Happy Valley was impactful. On the most recent edition of ESPN’s College GameDay podcast, O’Brien spoke to Pete Thamel about the meaning of his time at Penn State and how the experiences of managing the program under sanctions helped prepare him for today’s challenges with the transfer portal.

“Penn State meant a lot to me,” O’Brien said. “When we went to Penn State, it was a terrible time. We don’t need to revisit that. But, we were probably the first team that really had to experience ‘the portal.’ Because when the sanctions came out, the guys at Penn State, they [the players] could go anywhere they wanted. The team that was taking them could go above 85 [scholarships] just to make room for them. So we had to recruit our own team. And I’ll never forget that.”

Former Nittany Lions head coach credits the community for helping to keep the program together

There’s no doubt that Bill O’Brien took over the program at an extremely challenging time in the history of Penn State football. After replacing Joe Paterno in 2012, Penn State went 15-9 in two seasons under O’Brien. 

But O’Brien was quick to credit the role of the Penn State community in keeping the program intact. “The type of people that came out to help us at Penn State, alums all over the place. Some of my best friends — Matt Millen is a great friend of mine — helped us keep that place together,” he told Thamel.

Ultimately, one of the biggest takeaways for Bill O’Brien from his time at Penn State was the value that the football program has on the university at large. That lesson is one that he is ready to apply to Boston College.

“And I think, at the end of the day, what I learned about that place was how important the team was,” O’Brien said. “Some guys left, but the guys that stayed were very much into the team aspect of things. They were good kids; they loved to practice, and they were proud to play for their institution. [That’s] very similar to what we have here right now [at Boston College}. Love football, love their school.”

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