HC Bill O'Brien details his plan to rebuild Boston College

New head coach Bill O'Brien has his work cut out for him at Boston College.

Frankly, bowl eligibility has been the goal at BC for some time now, but even that hasn't been a guarantee.

For instance, previous head coach Jeff Hafley made only one bowl — winning the Fenway Bowl last season. He went 22-26 in four seasons and was considered a relative success. 

In fact, since 2010, Boston College has been bowl-eligible only seven times. 

No, things aren't great at BC, but O'Brien saw an opportunity and he apparently believed in it. Believed in it so much that he skipped town on Ohio State after only just a few weeks as the Buckeyes' offensive coordinator.

To his credit, when speaking to ESPN on Wednesday, O'Brien does sound like a coach who believes in the foundation he has.

“The guys that are here right now — we just got done in the facility with a 6:30 a.m. workout — these guys are working hard,” he told Pete Thamel (h/t On3). “This is a good football team right here and right now and we need to build on that. We need tough guys. We need guys that care about getting a good education. We need guys that understand what it means to play here in this great city."

Getting "tough guys" is one thing. Getting "tough guys" who are also good at playing college football is another thing altogether, and the Eagles aren't exactly known as trendy on the recruiting trail.

So how does O'Brien plan to do it? It's all about Boston.

“We need to get guys on campus. Sell the city, sell the campus, sell what we’re all about. I think if we do that and we target the right guys, we’ll have a good football team," he said. "All these jobs take a lot of work. You have to work at it. We have to be organized and diligent about how we go about our work. It can be done.”

For what it's worth, O'Brien does have plenty of experience as a head coach and he knows how to build a program. He valiantly led the Penn State Nittany Lions in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, and he had a stint with the Houston Texans that saw him go 54-52 with six playoff appearances.

He's arguably the right guy for the job. Now he just has to work on finding those "tough guys".