North Carolina State has scheduled a press conference for 2 p.m. ET Friday afternoon, at which point they’re expected to announce that Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow is taking over the same post for the Wolfpack.
Speaking even before the Yow-to-NCSU rumors reached their boiling point Thursday night, head coach Tom O’Brien admitted that, with a new chancellor and new athletic director in the offing, he faces an uphill battle to retain his job if he doesn’t turn the program around post haste.
“Certainly you get evaluated differently because it’s not the people who brought you in, who did the research to bring you in,” O’Brien told the Raleigh News & Observer.
“I don’t think there’s ever a make-or-break season. But the situation has changed. The chancellor I came here with and the athletic director I came here with are no longer here. Things have changed a lot.
“How that’s going to affect our situation won’t be solved until the chancellor and new AD decide what direction -- or if there’s a new direction -- they want to go in.”
O’Brien has finished with seven losses during each of his three seasons in Raleigh and, obviously, has never led the Wolfpack to a bowl game. As he embarks on his fourth year at the school, and given the abject mediocrity of his regime thus far, it may not have mattered who the AD or chancellor or anybody else was; their direction would’ve been very much pointing toward O’Brien’s backside residing firmly on the hot seat entering the 2010 season.
[Writer’s note: O’Brien has indeed led the Wolfpack to a postseason game, the 2008 PapaJohns.com Bowl. Which they lost. My apologies for the most egregious error.]