DeCock: N.C. State, Wilson agreed to their divorce

In retrospect, given the personalities involved, this was inevitable.

Russell Wilson, driven and focused, was unwilling to give up even the mere possibility that he might play football this fall, still dreaming about the NFL even as he pursued a baseball career.

Tom O'Brien, the former Marine, had no interest in hitching the future of his football team to whether or not a 22-year-old could hit a curveball, especially when he had a blue-chip recruit cooling his heels in the wings.

Neither was willing to give up any control. Neither was willing to budge.

Wilson wanted to call his own shot. O'Brien insisted on calling his.

So after a three-year shotgun marriage that paid enormous dividends for both - let's not forget that Wilson was originally a Chuck Amato recruit - this is a sudden divorce.

A day after N.C. State sent out a news release trumpeting Wilson's selection as the Arthur Ashe scholar-athlete of the year, the school announced it was releasing Wilson from his scholarship on Friday afternoon at 5 p.m., the PR equivalent of slipping a note under the door when you know someone is at the beach.

Pick a perspective: N.C. State just let a potential Heisman Trophy candidate walk off campus and into some other lucky coach's arms. Or, a football coach finally put his foot down with a player who had held the program hostage for two years as he fiddled with another sport.

The reality, of course, is somewhere in the middle, as it always is. No one wins here, except for maybe Mike Glennon. Wilson's unwillingness to give up his baseball career cost him the right to play football for the school he loved. O'Brien, meanwhile, pushed one of the best quarterbacks in school history out the door prematurely, and who knows how many wins went with him.

I don't know whether Russell Wilson is a major league baseball player. I don't know whether he's an NFL quarterback. I do know, when healthy, he was as good a college quarterback as I ever saw. Maybe not when it came to arm strength or reading defenses or any of the arcane stuff Jon Gruden won't shut up about, but when it came to the only thing that matters: winning.

I spoke with O'Brien and Wilson as N.C. State prepared for its spring game. O'Brien was adamant that if Wilson returned, he would be Glennon's backup. This was the price Wilson paid for being unwilling to commit full time to football. At the time, I found this very easy to understand and very hard to believe. Clearly, O'Brien had no choice but to take that position; at the same time, clearly he would have to play Wilson if he returned.

Wilson, meanwhile, returned my phone call from Asheville, where he was getting ready for the Tourists' home opener. It was a quick conversation, just to make sure his plans hadn't changed. He was equally adamant that football was still an option for him, as I expected him to say.

At some point in the two weeks since the spring game, O'Brien called Wilson's bluff. Or maybe it's the other way around. I lose track.

Either way, if Wilson plays football this fall, he won't be Glennon's backup.

In the end, the passion and intensity that make both Wilson and O'Brien good at what they do became the wedge that drove them apart.