George O'Leary
From NCAA College Football Information & Resource
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George O'Leary (born George Joseph O'Leary on August 17, 1946 in Central Islip, New York) is the head football coach of the University of Central Florida Golden Knights in the NCAA college football tournament. Prior to his coaching stint with the Golden Knights, O'Leary has served as the head football coach for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and as assistant coach for the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL. O'Leary has also been credited for his work in both Tech and UCF, most especially with his latest tenure at Central Florida which elevated the Golden Knight football into a model college football program.
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Personal Life
George is married to the former Sharon Littlefield and has four children with her; daughters Chris and Trish and sons Tim and Marty. He had his first grandchild in 2006 after his son Tim and daughter-in-law Jennifer gave birth to a son named Tate. Both his sons played football for Georgia Tech with Tim suiting up from 1990 through '91 and Marty from 1997 through 2001. George has a vacation home in Lake Oconee (halfway between Atlanta and Augusta), sharing lakefront real estate with Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer and Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen, among others. As a kid, George grew up with seven other children at their home. One of his older brother, Pete, is a former cop from Long Island. George attended Central Islip High School in Long Island, studied his first two collegiate years at the University of Dubuque in Iowa before taking up a degree in physical education at the University of New Hampshire.
High School
O'Leary jumpstarted his football coaching career on the high school level when he served as assistant coach to his alma mater from 1968-74. He was promoted to the head coaching position in 1975 and handled the team for two seasons. He had a two-year record of 16-1-1, won the Coach-of-the-Year award in 1976, and coached the likes of quarterback Mike Tice. In 1977, he was hired by Liverpool High School in upstate New York and mentored the team for three seasons. He had a three-year record of 21-7 at Liverpool, including a spotless 10-0 mark in 1979 and highlighted his three-year career winning the Coach of the Year award in two occassions.
Syracuse
In 1980, after 12 years in high school football, O'Leary took his act into the collegiate level via a tenure with Frank Maloney's coaching staff. He served as the defensive line coach in his first four seasons, under Maloney in his first year and under Dick MacPherson on the ensuing years. It was a struggle for the Orangemen during those years, as the team went 5-6 in his first year with the defense giving up 20.2 ppg, and then fell to 4-6-1 in 1981 while giving up 24.1 ppg, 2-9-0 and 22.2 ppg in 1982, before improving to identical 6-5 records in 1983 and 1984, while giving up only 18.2 and 13.7 ppg respectively. In 1985, he was elevated into the assistant head coaching position and the Orangemen had its highest number of victories and its first bowl game appearance in six years after sporting a 7-5 card and a berth in the Cherry Bowl. O'Leary held the same position in 1986 but Syracuse turned out a losing record of 5-6, though SU did manage to win 4 of their last 5 outings. In seven seasons with Syracuse, O'Leary has handled several future NFL players including Tim Green (the top selection of the Atlanta Falcons), Mike Charles (all-American chosen in the first round by the Miami Dolphins), and Blaise Winter (second-round pick of the Indianapolis Colts).
Georgia Tech (Staff)
O'Leary moved to Georgia Tech in 1987 to join the staff of head football coach Bobby Ross as defensive line coach and defensive coordinator. It was a disastrous maiden year for O'Leary and Tech as the team suffered nine losses in 11 outings and were outscored by opponents 199-275. In 1988, although Tech only had a one-win improvement, the defense held up by allowing only 17.6 points, which was seven points less than the previous season. Georgia Tech went on to improve drastically in 1989 with a 7-4 record, highlighted by a 4-game winning run to end the season. The 1990 football squad made history by capturing its first ever Atlantic Coast Conference Championship and winning its first national championship in almost four decades (last title was won with coach Robert L. "Bobby" Dodd on the helm) after going unbeaten for the first time since 1952 with an 11-0-1 record. O'Leary's defense also stood out in the New Year's Florida Citrus Bowl after holding Nebraska to 21 points to Tech's 45. In 1991, Tech dipped a bit and produced only 7 wins in 12 regular season assignments. The team did manage to win the Aloha Bowl, upstaging Stanford 18-17 and held opponents to an average of 16.5 points a game. During his stay at Tech, O'Leary mentored three All-Americans in free safety Ken Swilling, outside linebacker Marco Coleman, and defensive tackle Coleman Rudolph along with 14 others that made it to the All-ACC teams.
San Diego Chargers
After a successful stint at Georgia Tech, Ross moved up into the professional ranks and brought along with him his defensive line coach. But the struggling Chargers carried along their miserable performance from the previous seasons after losing their first four assignments. However, O'Leary's defensive team held on and turned their season around with 4 straight wins before finishing the season with 7 consecutive victories to win the AFC West with an 11-5 record. The turnaround made it into the record books as it was the first time ever that a team started 0-4 and made it to the playoffs. It was the first playoff appearance for the Chargers in 10 years and their first American Football Conference Western Division title since 1981. The defense also showed their claw in the first round of playoffs after shutting out the Kansas City Chiefs, 17-0. But San Diego's Cinderella story was abbreviated after getting humbled by the Miami Dolphins, 0-34 the following week. Nevertheless, the defense's improvement was undeniable as the Chargers registered 51 sacks, which once stood as the fourth best in team history.
In 1993, with quarterback Stan Humphries sidelined in several games, the defense failed to carry the team to the same amount of success the previous year. With an even 8-8 record, the Chargers missed the playoff bus by just a game.
Return to Georgia Tech
During the 1994 season, Tech suffered a 6-game slide under head football coach Bill Lewis. With a 1-7 record, the program tapped O'Leary's services to handle the Yellow Jackets in the last three games as interim coach. O'Leary failed to add another win for the Yellow Jackets and the team ended the season with a 1-10 record, which was Tech's worst turnout since sporting the same record in 1981. On the 28th of November 1994, O'Leary was named as the 10th head football coach in Georgia Tech history by then Director of Athletics Dr. Homer Rice. In his first full season at Tech in 1995, the Yellow Jackets improved to a 6-5 record, including 1-point losses to Arizona and Georgia. After a 5-6 record in 1996, Tech recorded a 7-5 mark in 1997 highlighted by a Carquest Bowl victory over West Virginia. Another spectacular year was achieved in 1998 as the team made historic strides after claiming a share of the ACC title with Florida State (7-1 in the league), beating four nationally-ranked opponents which include a 21-19 triumph over arch-rival Georgia (first since 1990), a 10-2 overall record (2nd-best since 1956), and a #9 ranking in the final national polls (2nd only to the 1966 ranking).
His remarkable coaching performance earned him the American Football Coaches Association's GTE Region I Coach of the Year and the Atlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year awards. He was also voted as one of ten finalists in Football Writers Association of America's GTE Region I Coach of the Year accolade. In 1999, O'Leary's Joe Hamilton-led squad was tops in the nation in terms of total offense (509.0 yards per game), second in scoring average (40.7), and was one of only two teams in the nation to average at least 200 yards rushing and passing. That team finished with an 8-4 record with a Gator Bowl appearance against Miami. In 2000, despite Hamilton's departure, O'Leary managed to steer the team to an unexpected turn-out with a 9-3 overall record including a second place 6-2 standing in conference play, and a Peach Bowl berth against LSU. His masterful job netted him the ACC Coach of the Year and the Bobby Dodd National Coach of the Year Awards.
2001 marked O'Leary's final stay at Tech, guiding the team to a 7-5 regular season record with three close losses that hindered another double-digit winning season. He ended his head coaching career at Georgia Tech with a 52-33 overall record, including a 34-14 mark in his last four seasons and 9 wins over nationally-ranked opponents. His tenure also featured all sorts of accomplishments including six winning seasons in seven years, five straight Top 25 finishes, a share of the 1998 ACC title, 12 wins over ranked teams and three straight wins over arch-rival Georgia (1998-99-00) for the first time since the early 1960s. Under O'Leary's tutelage, Tech was able to produce five all-American players, three of which were consensus first-team selections, the 1999 Heisman Trophy runner-up, one academic all-American and 41 all-conference honorees. His 52 wins is fourth behind Hall of Fame coaches John Heisman, William Alexander and Bobby Dodd, while his 36-22 record in the ACC marked the most league wins than any previous Tech mentor. Among O'Leary's staff during his tour of duty at Tech include Ralph Friedgen, Randy Edsall, and Ted Roof, all of whom ended up with head coaching calls from Maryland, Connecticut, and Duke.
In an NCAA investigation, it was found out that several Tech players fielded in during O'Leary's tenure were ineligible. However, the infractions were not pinned on O'Leary or his staff, rather it was attributed to the deficiencies in the school's administration. The initial requirement that Georgia Tech vacate the performances of the football team for games in which these ineligible players participated was overturned on appeal. Tech would however be placed on probation and would go on to lose scholarships because of the violations.
Notre Dame
After a highly successful career at Georgia Tech, O'Leary landed a head coaching job somewhere else when Notre Dame announced his hiring on the 9th of December 2001 to be the 27th coach of the Fighting Irish. However, he would eventually step down five days later without coaching a game after it was found out that he lied about his academic and athletic background. On his resume, he claimed to have received a master's degree from New York University in 1972 but a background check revealed that he did attend the university but did not receive a degree. The biography released by Notre Dame upon O'Leary's hiring also claimed that he was a three-year letterwinner at New Hampshire when in fact, he never even played a single game for the team. O'Leary acknowledged problems in his biographical materials, "including his academic background" and blamed the inaccuracies on 'resume padding' that had followed him through his career, saying, "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 misstatement were never stricken from my resume or biographical sketch in later years."
Longtime New Hampshire journalist and the late John 'Doc' Hussey (who passed away on April 2008) discovered the inconsistencies on the public-relations biography of George O'Leary after attempting to do a local-angle story on O'Leary upon his Notre Dame hiring. His discoveries were shared to colleague Jim Fennell, whose reporting ultimately revealed that O'Leary had falsified his resume. [1]
Minnesota Vikings
After the Notre Dame controversy, O'Leary was hired by former player and recently hired Minnesota head coach Mike Tice to be the defensive coordinator and defensive line coach for the Vikings. His defensive coaching helped the Vikings improve from being ranked 30th in 2001 to 10th in 2002. Among his proteges at Minnesota include defensive tackle Chris Hovan (selected to the Sports Illustrated All-Pro team after recording a team-high 36 quarterback hurries) and Kenny Mixon (finished the season with a defensive line-high 82 tackles).
UCF
Two years after his last collegiate stint, O'Leary was announced as the 8th head football coach on December of 2003 for a struggling UCF football program hounded by player suspensions and a 3-9 record in 2003. He received a 5-year deal to coach the Golden Knights and replace Mike Kruczek, who was fired on the 10th of November 2003.
2004
In his first season with the Golden Knights, O'Leary handed UCF its worst season ever, and its first winless season since 1982, after losing 11 consecutive games and being defeated by as much as 36 points (losing 7-43 to Miami).
But what O'Leary failed to deliver on the field, he accomplished on the classroom as the Knights set a new school Division I-A history record with a 2.78 team GPA. In the fall semester of 2004, 40 percent of the entire team earned a 3.00 GPA or higher.
2005
After a lackluster debut, the Golden Knights made their transition to Conference USA with O'Leary spearheading the fourth-best turnaround in the history of college football after leading the Golden Knights to an 8-5 record and its first ever football championship---the Conference USA East Division championship, and its first ever bowl game. The team would however lose the C-USA championship game to Tulsa (with 51,000 fans in attendance) and surrender the Hawaii Bowl game to Nevada by a slim 1-point margin after UCF kicker Matt Prater missed the game-tying extra point conversion in overtime. Nevertheless, O'Leary's sophomore year has placed the program back on the map after the team became only the sixth team in NCAA history to go to a bowl a year after going winless and the fourth team in NCAA history to earn a bowl berth while playing seven road games in an 11-game schedule. For his efforts, O'Leary was named the Conference USA Coach of the Year, as well as the CBSSportsLine.com and the SportsIllustrated.com National Coach of the Year.
The program also continued to excel in terms of its academics with a new school Division I-A history record of 2.808 team GPA in the fall of 2005. 39 of the university's student-athletes also made it to the Conference USA Commissioner's Honor Roll, the most of any football squad in the conference.
2006
On May, O'Leary received a 10-year contract extension which would tie him up with UCF until 2015. The extension will pay him a base salary of $1 million in 2006 and up to $1.5 million based on incentives. After much hype, the Golden Knights failed to live up to expectations, losing 8 of the team's 12 games by an average of 18 points.
2007
Despite a dismal showing in 2006, O'Leary's desire to improve the program reached another milestone as the on-campus stadium, which has been discussed before, was ready to host the Golden Knights' home games in only 18 months of completion. After a 25-23 win in the season opener @ N.C. State, UCF hosted their first ever home game on the 15th of September 2007 against Texas at the Bright House Networks Stadium infront of a sold-out crowd. In the ESPN nationally-televised game, the Golden Knights just came up short, 32-35. UCF won their next two assignments at home against Memphis and Louisiana-Lafayette, and after losing to East Carolina and South Florida, the Golden Knights would sweep its next seven assignments including a rematch for the Conference USA Championship against Tulsa. UCF would go and beat the Golden Hurricane, 44-25, before losing the Liberty Bowl showdown to Mississippi State, 3-10. O'Leary capped the year with another Conference USA Coach of the Year award.
The team's overall GPA was also on a steady rise with a team record 3.035 overall GPA during the 2007 summer semester, a far cry from before O'Leary's arrival which reached an all-time low of 2.018 in 2003. The Knights had an in-season team GPA of 2.753 which brought the cumulative GPA of the Knights' roster to 2.838.
Highlights
| George O'Leary interview after season-opening win over NC State in 2007. (from Chatham Journal) |
Year-by-Year
| Year | School | Record | Conference | Standing | Bowl | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (Atlantic Coast Conference) (1994 — 2001) | ||||||
| 1994 | Georgia Tech | 0-3 | 0-2 | 10 | Interim head coach for the last 3 games. | |
| 1995 | Georgia Tech | 6-5 | 5-3 | 4 | ||
| 1996 | Georgia Tech | 5-6 | 4-4 | 5 | ||
| 1997 | Georgia Tech | 7-5 | 5-3 | T-3 | Carquest Bowl | |
| 1998 | Georgia Tech | 10-2 | 7-1 | T-1 | Toyota Gator Bowl | ACC Co-Champs |
| 1999 | Georgia Tech | 8-4 | 5-3 | T-2 | Toyota Gator Bowl | |
| 2000 | Georgia Tech | 9-3 | 6-2 | T-2 | Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl | |
| 2001 | Georgia Tech | 7-5 | 4-4 | T-4 | Seattle Bowl | |
| Georgia Tech | 52-33 | 36-22 | ||||
| Central Florida Knights (Conference USA) (2004 – 2007) | ||||||
| 2004 | Central Florida | 0-11 | 0-8 | 7-MAC East | ||
| 2005 | Central Florida | 8-5 | 7-2 | 1-C-USA East | Hawaii Bowl | |
| 2006 | Central Florida | 4-8 | 3-5 | 4-C-USA East | ||
| 2007 | Central Florida | 10-3 | 8-1 | 1-C-USA East | Liberty Bowl | |
| Central Florida | 22-27 | 18-17 | ||||
| Total | 74-60 | |||||
References
- An Apologetic O'Leary Receives Another Chance
- By George
- George O' Leary Georgia Tech Profile
- George O'Leary UCF Profile
- George O'Leary Wikipedia
- O'Leary out at Notre Dame after one week
- School shows big time commitment to coach
External Links
Categories: Central Florida head coaches | NCAA head football coaches | Conference USA head football coaches
