Bill O’Brien Neglected One Key Difference During His Scathing Takedown..

Bill O’Brien did not have any kind words about the SMU fanbase or its behavior during Saturday’s college football game in Dallas. Boston College was on the receiving end of a verbal attack that apparently reached inappropriate levels of insult.

However, the 55-year-old failed to mention one key difference in the set up at Gerald J. Ford Stadium compared to other places he has played in the past.

O’Brien is in his first year with the Eagles. He left his role as the offensive coordinator at Ohio State to take the job in Chestnut Hill, which is closer to home and presented him with an opportunity to be a head coach for the first time since being fired by the Houston Texans in 2020. Before that, he was the head coach at Penn State and previously worked at Duke, Maryland and Georgia Tech, and with the New England Patriots.

All of this goes to say that Bill O’Brien has a lot of experience in all kinds of hostile environments all over the country on both the collegiate and professional levels. And yet, he considers SMU to be the worst road experience of his 30-year career— in a bad way.

Although O’Brien did not expand further on what the Mustangs might’ve said, but there is plenty of room to read between the lines. Whatever they were yelling at Boston College’s bench was… not kind!

While this account of SMU’s fanbase does not reflect well on the university or its students, there is one important caveat to O’Brien’s comments. He referenced the SEC and the NFL.

In Dallas, the student section is currently located right behind the visiting team’s bench. That is not the case for the vast majority of Southeastern Conference programs, which typically put their student sections in one of the end zones. There is also much greater distance between the benches on the sideline and the crowd at most NFL stadiums than there is at Gerald J. Ford Stadium.

With that in mind, some of Bill O’Brien’s takedown of the Mustangs does not represent the whole truth. If more SEC schools put their student sections within spitting distance of the visitor’s bench, his belief about last weekend likely would not exist. Places like Auburn, Florida, etc. would be a lot more aggressive.