Since they share the same name and the same Jesuit alma mater, Jim O'Brien and Jim O'Brien have frequently been confused with one another over the years, and, truth be known, up until about 10 days ago neither of them minded much at all.

Football Jim O'Brien graduated from Boston College in 1960, and had brief flings with the Detroit Lions and Buffalo Bills before a knee injury curtailed a nascent professional career. He is better known on the other side of the Atlantic as the impresario whose Brian Boru Company brought American football to Ireland by staging the "Emerald Isle Classic" between BC and the United States Military Academy at Lansdowne Road 10 years ago as part of Dublin's millennium celebration.

That Jim O'Brien has maintained his Irish connections, and now serves as president of the New England chapter of the Ireland Chamber of Commerce USA.

Basketball Jim O'Brien played for BC half a dozen years later, and, following a brief and equally undistinguished professional hoops career, turned to coaching. At roughly the same time Football Jim was establishing a beach-head in Dublin, Basketball Jim became the head coach at Boston College, and served with distinction for 11 sometimes rancorous seasons before departing for Ohio State University last year.

The athletic achievements of both Jim O'Briens resulted in their respective installations in Boston College's sports Hall of Fame.

Basketball Jim was widely admired during his tenure at BC, and his departure, which followed the university's failure to provide him with the long-term contract extension he (and many others) believed he had earned, was roundly lamented. While he was on the job, Basketball Jim's wife died young, leaving him to raise two well-mannered teenaged daughters on his own, and on several occasions he demonstrated himself to be a "players' coach," sticking up for his young charges in battles with the administration, as well as with the somewhat despotic athletic director at the time, Chet Gladchuck.

His way out of town was paved a couple of years ago when the school's director of admissions, John Mahoney, rejected, ostensibly on academic grounds, the applications of two high school players named Elton Tyler and Jonathan DePina, to whom O'Brien had already offered scholarships.

Many saw the manipulative hand of Gladchuck, who had inherited O'Brien and probably yearned to bring in a coach of his own choosing, operating behind the scenes. Still others saw it as a direct reaction to a gambling scandal which had scuttled the BC football team the previous autumn. In both cases Basketball Jim was personally embarrassed by the episode, and when Ohio State came calling that spring, they didn't have to ask twice.

Gladchuck, a man who could sense which way the wind was about to blow, also hit the road at the first opportunity, accepting the athletic director's job at Tulane University in New Orleans.

For the past year O'Brien, through his attorney John Bonistalli, conducted a longrange negotiation with BC's representatives over $195,000 in salary and severance money he felt was still owed him on his contract, but for the most part it was a case of out of sight, out of mind - until the afternoon of May 11th, when an eagle-eyed journalist poking through the files at the Suffolk County Courthouse unearthed the contents of a lawsuit Basketball Jim had filed against Boston College, charging breach of contract, slander, and (gasp!) racial discrimination in l'affaire Tyler et DePina, both of whom happened to be black.

Reaction was not long coming, and some of it was misdirected.

"I got five angry phone calls the afternoon the story broke," said Football Jim O'Brien, who had only returned from Ireland a day before the details of Basketball Jim's lawsuit hit the fan.

Since Bonistalli had originally asked the judge to place the details of the complaint under seal, the suspicion is that the more inflammatory charges constituted sort of a "poison pill" never intended for public consumption. More likely, they were included in the complaint simply to hasten the negotiating process (and, indeed, once it did become public, a settlement was struck within days), particularly since allegations so nebulous in nature would have been difficult to prove in a court of law.

The damage, nonetheless, had been done.

Claiming to be "shocked, saddened, and angered by this charge," the college president, Reverend William P Leahy, SJ, hastily convened a press conference to rebut O'Brien's allegations. The BC folks even trotted out Al Skinner, Basketball Jim's successor (who also happens to be black) as people's exhibit number one.

"I will not allow the university to be subjected to this reckless and irresponsible claim," thundered Father Leahy. "It goes to the very heart of the university, and I cannot allow it to go unchallenged. You can settle the breach of contract, but I'll never settle anything that claims Boston College is a racist institution."

Within days, an out-of-court settlement had been reached. Basketball Jim got his money and went back to Ohio, leaving several thousand fewer friends and admirers in New England than he had had a couple of weeks ago.

Boston College was left to struggle with a tarnished image. Despite the haste with which the settlement was reached, the university will now have to contend with the perception that it is less than hospitable to players of colour every time its athletic representatives go foraging for recruits in inner-city ghettoes.

Ostensibly the corollary victims, Tyler and DePina, who now play, respectively, for Miami and UMass, were duly tracked down and re-subjected to unwelcome scrutiny.

"They're two innocent bystanders, " protested Skinner, the present basketball coach, whose job will be made considerably more difficult as a result of the unseemly episode.

There's at least one more innocent bystander we can think of. Football Jim O'Brien, who wouldn't dream of suing his alma mater, is still catching hell for having done so, even though he didn't.

"What was the point of all this?" wondered Football Jim. "I don't know where Jimmy could have been coming from.

"Jim is basically a nice guy," said Football Jim, who hasn't spoken to his namesake, but who continues to hear from his detractors. "I think he was ill-advised, and I'm sure he probably regrets that it took the form that it did."