I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias (1818)
Shelley's point was this: achievement is impermanent, and time has a way of making empires fade.
If you told me before the
season began that it would be George O'Leary's last season at UCF, I
would have believed it. The retirement rumors had long swirled and were
at a fever pitch in 2014 when some claimed that O'Leary would retire
following the Penn State game in Ireland. If you told me that he would
leave after presiding over a colossal wreck of a season, sitting at 0-8,
I would have been shocked.
O'Leary leaves a complicated
legacy. He built this UCF program, leading it to virtually every
meaningful achievement. The Knights' first bowl appearance. Their first
bowl win. A Fiesta Bowl
win. Their first national ranking. Their first top ten ranking. On
O'Leary's watch, UCF built an on-campus stadium and jumped conferences
twice.[1] He coached the Knights to four conference championships: two in Conference USA and two in the American Athletic Conference. He built winning teams from unheralded recruits, putting players like Blake Bortles, Breshad Perriman, and Latavius Murray into the NFL.
And he bookended all of this
with winless seasons. O'Leary went 0-11 in 2004, his first season with
the Knights. Even if the team can notch a win this year - which seems
very unlikely - O'Leary won't be wearing the headset for it.
What happened off the field
also complicates O'Leary's legacy. Before UCF, he spent a total of five
days as the head coach of Notre Dame before being fired for making false statements on his resume. O'Leary described it this way:
Many years ago, as a young, married father, I sought to pursue my dream as a football coach. In seeking employment, I prepared a resume that contained inaccuracies regarding my completion of course work for a master's degree and also my level of participation in football at my alma mater. These misstatements were never stricken from my resume or biographical sketch in later years. During my coaching career, I believe I have been hired because of the success of my players on the field and the evaluation of my peers. However, these misstatements have resurfaced and become a distraction and embarrassment to the University of Notre Dame, an institution I dearly love.
And of course, this meant that
UCF was able to get a coach who would have been otherwise inaccessible,
and at a bargain price. Over the years, UCF proved loyal to O'Leary -
even in difficult times and rocky seasons - and O'Leary reciprocated.
Though O'Leary was fired in
ignominy from Notre Dame, the UCF sports marketing department embraced a
campaign that focused on the entity of the Knight's new coach, casting
him as a heel and old school tough guy. The 2004 UCF football poster
featured a close-up of a shouting O'Leary and the unfortunate phrase,
"Change is nothing to FEAR. The Coach, now that's another story." This,
in a year in which the Knights would end up losing every game.
Commercials highlighting O'Leary were also . . . awkward.
It was during George O'Leary's
tenure that player Ereck Plancher collapsed and following conditioning
drills in March 2008. Plancher's death, determined by the Orange County
medical examiner to have resulted from sickle cell trait complications,
was an absolute tragedy. Extensive civil litigation followed, and though
O'Leary was not a defendant, he was a prominent figure in the case. The
jury found that UCF's Athletic Association was negligent in Plancher's
death. UCF ultimately prevailed on a sovereign immunity issue, and UCFAA's liability was reduced to $200,000.
O'Leary's often candid
comments to the media seemed sometimes refreshing, and at other times
remarkably tone deaf, especially when cast in the light of the Plancher
tragedy. He drew criticism
for his statement that "There is no question the kids today are softer
than kids in the past, in my mind. I think it comes from too much
parental babying . . . ."
Still, O'Leary's emphasis on
discipline and academics were praiseworthy (and, in truth, not praised
nearly enough). In O'Leary's twelve years, there were few player
arrests. And Knights earned degrees. UCF had a 90 percent graduation
success rate in 2014 - third among public universities, first in the
state of Florida, and first in the AAC. The football program improved
its graduation success rate the last eight years in a row.
His influence on the fledgling
AAC is significant. The Knights won the first conference title in 2013
outright and shared the second with Cincinnati and Memphis last year.
The tremendous Fiesta Bowl win over Baylor gave the conference instant
credibility in its inaugural year.
This year has been an
unqualified failure on the field as the Knights sank to a spectacularly
bad 0-8, including a loss to FCS Furman (the Knight's first loss to an
FCS or Division II program since leaving Division II themselves). And
for a coach who achieved so much success, it's unfortunate that it ends
like this. More so considering the revelation
that he wanted to retire following the Fiesta Bowl win and was talked
back into returning for two more seasons. O'Leary could have easily gone
out on the high note, but it wasn't to be. The disappointment of this
season would not sting so badly had O'Leary not brought the program to
the heights he did. He is the reason the UCF program has the privilege
of having real expectations.
O'Leary is in the unusual
position of having resigned twice from UCF this year - once from his gig
as the interim athletic director, and now from the head coaching job.
His choice to step away now will draw comparisons to Steve Spurrier's
recent mid-season resignation. And like Spurrier, O'Leary's choice to
end things now will help the program he put on the map move on to the
future.
So long, George O'Leary. And thanks for the memories. May you have a better fate than Shelley's statue.
* * *
[1] Though the invitation to Conference USA came in 2003 before O'Leary was hired.
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