Bill O’Brien’s wife Colleen O’Brien is the mother of two and proud supporter of her football ladder-climbing husband. Bill took over as the head coach of the Houston Texans in January of this year, two years after he took over as head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions following the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal that sent the Penn State athletic organization into a tailspin.
Colleen met Bill while he was an assistant coach at Georgia Tech in the mid 90’s. She was attending a hangout which actually included Bill’s father and brother, who apparently told him not to screw it up. That’s kind of weird, don’t you think? They were probably just joking, but it’d be funny if in reality Bill O’Brien was this massive screw-up with women, and he needed his dad and brother to hang around and whisper pointers and tips in his ear. Bill O’Brien’s wife Colleen O’Brien is now more than grateful they were there to guide him along. At that time, she was in law school preparing to become an athletic director, but as her relationship with Bill moved along, she realized it would be far too much sports in one house. She has joked, “I’d have to hire him or get rid of him if he wasn’t doing well. I don’t think that would have worked out very well.” Again, that would be amazing– wife is forced to fire incompetent husband coach and then cook him apology dinner after work.
Bill himself has steadily sky-rocketed through the coaching ranks. He actually was hired as an offensive assistant at the New England Patriots in 2007 and managed to move up to offensive coordinator by 2011. His wife Colleen has said they were so dead-focused on this job that when Bill got hired to coach for Penn State, the two were in shock, and she then immediately began planning out how to proceed. She had to do the same thing a few years later now that Bill is the head honcho in Houston.