and that's where I met my first friends in North Carolina. It was still tough — anytime you're that young and you move across the country. But it made it a little easier being on a team and the same group of guys every day. That bridged the gap a little bit.'' Eventually, he came around to his parent's thinking on the core value of his schooling. "Then I started seeing it myself — what an education can do for your career,'' he said. "But I re- ally didn't see that until the end of middle school and the start of high school. Then, I took it pret- ty seriously.'' A few years later, he began to realize that football could be a vehicle to a college scholarship. "It was maybe the end of my sophomore season and the be- ginning of my junior season when I started getting a little in- terest,'' he said. "After my junior year — I had a pretty good year — I was taking visits and Duke was my first offer. Worst case scenario? I'm going to Duke University for free.'' From the very beginning of the recruiting process, O'Brien
"I warmed up for a couple of games thinking I might go in, especially later in the year,'' he recalled. "But preparing like I was going to be the starter allowed me to be ready when it was my time to play."
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wanted to select a school where if he didn't end up playing football, he would still be content with his choice from an educational standpoint. He didn't receive any offers from Big Ten programs and picked Maryland over Duke and Virginia. "I really wanted to go into business,'' he said,
"and the Smith School of Business at Maryland is one of the Top 25 in the country. That was a big selling point for me as much as the football part was.'' The principal salesperson for the Terps was assistant coach James Franklin, who was Ralph Friedgen's offensive coordinator. Franklin raved
