State offsides with BC

N.C. State's football team had a propensity for fouls in recent seasons. That's one of the reasons Chuck Amato doesn't coach there anymore.

But even with him gone, State is still tripping over the rules. This time it has broken an unwritten one.

In moving to replace Amato, State has raided a fellow Atlantic Coast Conference school. It has hired Tom O'Brien away from Boston College.

Apparently ACC expansion also did away with a sense of collegiality. Any coach is fair game within the league. Once that gets started, where does it end? In three years, will Miami be knocking on Butch Davis' door? Can you sidetrack a league rival by throwing money at its coach?

The loss of collegiality shouldn't be a surprise. Look what expansion did to hospitality. BC has been repeatedly knocked around since it first considered joining the ACC.

First the league wooed the Eagles, then rejected them, leaving them to slouch back to the Big East. Then the ACC came back and took in the Eagles, but somehow when it comes to bowl bids, other ACC teams elbow their way ahead of BC.

Now comes this, appropriately from a school that kept BC out of a better bowl with Daniel Evans' version of the Doug Flutie pass.

O'Brien may have decided it was OK being a new member of the ACC, but it would be even better to really be part of it.

Boston College backers will take solace in sour grapes. They'll say O'Brien was OK, but couldn't get over the hump. It's sort of like a man being relieved of his wallet and saying he enjoys the extra room in his pocket. They know they've lost something.

As one BC booster put it, "If they're letting O'Brien leave, the next guy better be Knute Rockne."

O'Brien is a fine coach. He knows the ACC as a former offensive coordinator at Virginia. He has won at BC with teams that also excelled at graduating. He has led his team to a school-record eight straight bowl games.

Lots of schools would want O'Brien and it's clear why State took him. But there should have been something that stood in the way of the deal. He's part of the conference.

Since the ACC was founded, only one coach has left an ACC school to go to another, and that was a coach returning to his alma mater. In 1956, Jim Tatum left Maryland to return to North Carolina. Another Maryland coach, Bobby Ross, went to Georgia Tech in 1986 after serving a brief stint with the Buffalo Bills.

The culture and conventions of the league should mean something to State and to O'Brien. Athletics officials and coaches talk about "teaching the kids." What will be the lesson for BC's kids when they line up against State? That all that "we are the Eagles talk" should never get in the way of a coach's career? What's the message for State's kids? That the guy they played for lost too much and one of the few they beat is now the one to lead them?

It's confusing, but even college players by now know the score. When it comes to football coaches it's almost always about winning and money.

It seems obvious what prompted O'Brien to leave. He made less that $1 million in a league where less successful coaches got more. But the reason he got less was because BC is still trying to keep the athletic arms race within reason. It tried to hold the line, but it couldn't hold the coach.

Today for BC and O'Brien, it's welcome again to the ACC, whatever that means anymore.