Bill O'Brien admits Boston College is a developmental program

The Boston College Eagles recently hired Bill O’Brien to take over the program after head coach Jeff Halfley left the program to become the defensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers. Now, O’Brien is on a quest to build his coaching staff and the Eagles roster going forward under his command.

As far as how he intends to build his staff, the longtime head coach and former offensive coordinator will do so with a particular goal in mind.

During a recent sit-down interview with ESPN’s Pete Thamel, O’Brien revealed what kind of coaches he is looking for and how he plans on assembling his Boston College roster.

“I think so, and I think that’s one of the things,” said O’Brien when asked if Boston College is a developmental program. “The staff that that we’re assembling is a staff filled with good developmental coaches; guys that know how to develop players [and] that have been in programs that develop players.

“I was just telling somebody, when you watch the Super Bowl the other day, there are two quarterbacks, awesome quarterbacks, but ones from Texas Tech and ones from Iowa State. So, there are great players out there across the country. We need to do a good job of identifying who they are, target them, and do a good job of getting them to campus and sell what we’re all about.”

O’Brien understands he’s currently not in a position to compete with the elites of the college football landscape. So he plans on starting out his tenure at Boston College, stamping the program as a developmental one. And if he is successful in doing that, O’Brien could make the Eagles into a serious contender in the ACC for years to come.

O’Brien defines success at Boston College

Now that he has taken over and is beginning to get re-established in the college ranks, O’Brien is wasting little time making sure everyone around him knows exactly what the expectations are.

“Yeah look, I think we have to go out there and do our very best to win every single game,” O’Brien told ESPN’s Pete Thamel on the College GameDay Podcast. “Losing will never be accepted here. But to think we’re going to go out there and be in the Final Four every year, that’s probably not realistic. But you do a great job recruiting, you get the right guys, you get a great quarterback and you catch lightning in a bottle, anything happen.”

It’s been a while since Boston College has won anything of consequence. The program’s last division title came in 2008, when the team won the ACC Atlantic. The last conference title came back in 2004, when Boston College was still in the Big East.

With the ACC expanding, too, the competition figures to be as fierce as ever for a conference crown.

“In the meantime we have to do a good job of embracing who we are,” O’Brien said. “We’re a team that’s going to be tough, we’re a team that’s going to go to class and we’re a team that’s going to be involved in the community. I think if we do that and we keep recruiting to that type of standard, I think we’ll win a lot of football games.”

Coming off a 7-6 campaign, the Eagles actually do have a little bit of momentum to build on going into the O’Brien era. He’ll have to supply the rest of the momentum for the full rebuild into what he wants the program to be.