Alternate plans for BC

With mixed emotions, the Boston College football team bid adieu to former coach Tom O'Brien, who met with his players one last time late yesterday afternoon to announce he was taking the job at North Carolina State, and welcomed defensive coordinator Frank Spaziani as interim head coach for the Dec. 30 Meineke Car Care Bowl against Navy in Charlotte, N.C.

"I don't know if it's a vote of confidence," said Spaziani, who indicated he would be throwing his hat in the ring for the BC vacancy. "We have a lot of good guys on the staff and I feel very privileged to be selected interim head coach, whatever that entails.

"Now we have a 22-day window to get ready for a game. We're in a short-term project to get this victory and run the offense and defense and the special teams the way we have, but, once again, it'll be different because Tom won't be there."

Junior quarterback Matt Ryan said it would be strange preparing for a game without O'Brien.

"There's no question that it's a different situation than what we're accustomed to," Ryan said. "But that's the nature of the business. That's the way it goes. Change is the one constant. That's something you have to learn to adapt to, and you have to learn at a young age. That's what everybody's going through right now.

"The best thing we have going for us right now is the 100 guys on this team who are tightly knit. We have a strong bond. We'll get through this together."

BC athletic director Gene DeFilippo indicated "it was mutually agreed" to not have O'Brien coach the bowl game. DeFilippo said the rest of BC's assistants will also coach in the bowl game.

"I want to thank Tom for 10 really, really great years here at Boston College," DeFilippo said. "The mark of a coach or an administrator is: Did you leave the program in a better state than you found it? And in Tom O'Brien's case, the answer is yes. He left this program in a lot better shape than the program he found.

"We're going to our eighth consecutive bowl, we've won six in a row, and Tom did a really wonderful job here and I'm thankful for that."

Greg Barber, a BC trustee and major benefactor of the football program who eight years ago funded a $3.5 million endowment for the head coaches' position, said Thursday he believed BC's administration did not do enough to keep BC's winningest coach (75-45) from leaving for an Atlantic Coast Conference division rival.

"This did not have to happen," Barber said Thursday. "The message was, 'We'll take our chances.' It was a high-stakes poker game and BC lost. They were willing to take the chance that nobody was going to come after him. Somebody did, it was appealing, and he went."

During his 10-year tenure at The Heights, O'Brien's name repeatedly surfaced for other vacancies, and "it became an annual rite of fall," DeFilippo said, referring to previous postings at Georgia Tech, Washington, and, this month, Arizona State and Stanford, which mentioned O'Brien as a possible candidate.

"People have asked me, 'Are we committed to hiring a good coach?' and 'Are we going to pay competitive salaries?' and all that," DeFilippo said. "And the answer is yes, we are."

Although O'Brien's salary was recently reported in USA Today to be $733,626, which put him in the bottom one-third among the ACC's 12 coaches, DeFilippo disclosed last night O'Brien's total compensation package at BC was $1 million.

Yesterday, O'Brien reportedly agreed to a seven-year deal at N.C. State that will pay him a minimum of $1.1 million and up to $1.8 million with incentives.

"It's a done deal," said Wendell Murphy, chairman of the N.C. State board of trustees, following yesterday's unanimous approval of O'Brien's hiring. "I'm thrilled to death. Hiring good coaches these days is tough. But we got ourselves a very good one."

Asked if he did anything to counter N.C. State's offer, DeFilippo said, "Tom and I had long discussions and I'd rather that those kinds of discussions remain between he and I."

Now DeFilippo will focus on making his first major hire at The Heights, embarking on a nationwide search for O'Brien's successor.

"We're going to go quick, but we're not going to hurry," DeFilippo said. "We're not going to leave one rock or one stone unturned; we're going to find the very best person we can find for this job."

Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.