Things haven’t been great for the Boston College football program this year. After a promising seven-win campaign in Bill O’Brien’s first season as the Eagles’ head coach, BC has crashed and burned in 2025. At 1-8 overall and 0-5 in the ACC, Boston College is on pace for potentially its worst season in nearly 50 years.
It’s fair to say that O’Brien is not taking it too well, considering his response to a reporter’s question about the message to fans following the Eagles’ eighth straight loss, which came at the hands of rival Notre Dame.
“I’m glad you’re down. I’m not down, nobody’s down,” O’Brien said during Tuesday’s press conference. “We’re fighting, we’re competing. It’s the second year of this program, Mike. You always come in here with these down questions. You show up, like, once a month or something like that, and you come in here with these down questions. I’m not down.
“I don’t know what year you graduated from BC, but this is a program that we’re building. Nobody here’s down. We’re positive, we’re going to show up, and play our asses off against SMU. You can go out there in your dark-clouded world or whatever it is and do what you want to do. We’re not down; the sun is up, and we’re fighting. That’s my message to the fans.”
Bill O’Brien, a Massachusetts native, first rose to prominence in the late 2000s as a New England Patriots assistant, including one season as Bill Belichick’s offensive coordinator. He was then hired as Penn State’s head football coach amid the program’s child sex abuse scandal, which had led to the firing of longtime coach Joe Paterno months earlier.
Credited with stabilizing the Nittany Lions during an unprecedentedly turbulent time, O’Brien went 15-9 at Penn State before being hired by the Houston Texans in 2014. Over parts of seven seasons in Houston, O’Brien—who was also briefly the team’s general manager—led the Texans to five nine-plus-win seasons and four playoff appearances.
After two years working as Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator at Alabama, O’Brien returned to the Patriots to serve as Belichick’s final offensive coordinator in New England. He then returned to the college ranks to be Ohio State’s offensive coordinator, but only a few weeks later, he became Boston College’s head coach following Jeff Hafley’s departure for the NFL.
Boston College hosts SMU and Georgia Tech over the next two weeks, and finishes its season at Syracuse on November 29.
https://clutchpoints.com/ncaa-football/boston-college-football-news-bill-obrien-fiery-rant-reporter-question