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A couple of ESPN stories
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Found a couple of stories about us on ESPN.com, but I imagine many of you have already read these by now . . . .

<a href='http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2219696' target='_blank'>O'Leary, Central Florida close in on bowl</a>

By Adam Rittenberg
Special to ESPN.com

In the first of their many closed-door meetings, Central Florida athletic director Steve Orsini looked at the man sitting across the table and made what seemed like an unreasonable request.

"I don't want you to change," Orsini told George O'Leary. "I want what you did at Georgia Tech here at UCF."

AP Photo
George O'Leary has guided UCF to the brink of its first bowl appearance.

How could O'Leary not change?

Extra helpings of shame and misery had been scraped onto the coach's plate after his résumé snafu at Notre Dame. O'Leary was taking over a UCF program that had incurred eight suspensions in 2003, nearly three times the number of team victories (three). And the cruelest card had yet to be dealt: The Golden Knights wouldn't win a single game in O'Leary's first season.

The burden was more than enough to trigger second-guessing and self-doubt. But O'Leary refused to fold.

"I'm very strong," O'Leary said. "Thick-skinned. I don't change."

Turns out he didn't need to. UCF has gone from winless to bowl-eligible in a season -- the nation's biggest turnaround. After ending the nation's longest losing streak at 17 games against Marshall, the Knights have won six of their last seven.

They lead the Conference USA East Division by a half game over Southern Miss.

As for O'Leary? He rebuilt the program without reinventing himself.

"He hasn't changed whether we were 0-11 or 6-3," Orsini said. "[Players] see coach is still the same guy -- still the first one in and the last to leave." O'Leary's drive was never lost on his players, especially last season.

"You're driving by the Wayne Densch [Sports Center] and you always saw his Lincoln parked out there," said DE Paul Carrington, one of four remaining players from the 2001 recruiting class. "It could be midnight or 1 in the morning. To put that much time and effort in and not even get one win the whole season after everything he dealt with, I'm sure it was tougher on him than anybody."

If it was, O'Leary rarely showed it.

"Of course he had days when he was down and he was angry," QB Steven Moffett said. "Everybody did. But he said he's been on teams that went 1-10 and he's been on teams that went to the national championship. The difference is people knowing what to do and going out and playing fast. He's the kind of guy you listen to."

Added Orsini: "We closed the door and chatted a lot last year. He really stood up to it -- much better than I did."

Players struggled to adjust to O'Leary's practices, which are structured to simulate game speed. Repeated mistakes forced practices to be run at "teaching tempo," which meant frequent stoppages for instruction. O'Leary's overall theme was simple -- "If you fumble at practice, you're probably going to fumble it in the game," Moffett said. But the team struggled to catch on.

The Knights' uncertainty showed on Saturdays, and they brain-cramped in critical situations. They lost four games by five points or fewer, including a 17-16 overtime setback against Ohio that ended on a missed extra point.

"We couldn't catch a break," Carrington said.

The losing was especially tough for Florida natives like Moffett (Winter Park), who saw his friends thriving at big-brother schools.

"I've got a lot of friends who play for UF and South Florida," Moffett said. "We talk to them and they're just like, 'Dang, I can't believe y'all are losing.' They hope for the best for us. It's hard to see them going to the bowl games and we go 0-11. They get all this stuff and I know we're working harder than them."

The hard work began to show in the offseason, and UCF reported to training camp refreshed and ready. O'Leary ran practices in "team scheme," running a play every 25 seconds.

Players didn't miss a beat.

"They know the field now," O'Leary said. "They know what's taking place at this end and that end. And when the horn blows, everybody's on the run. Last year they were all looking around, seeing if they could find their coach."

There's no more hand-holding at UCF.

Players are correcting each other in practice, and consequently fewer mistakes are being made in games. The Knights are tied for eighth nationally in average turnover margin (plus-1.22), and five of their wins have come by 10 points or fewer, including a 31-29 homecoming win Saturday against Houston.

"Last year this same game would have went against us and we probably would have lost it 31-29," Moffett said.

UCF is making strides off the field, as well. The school's board of trustees on Wednesday initially approved plans to build a 45,000-seat football stadium on campus.

Asked if he feels any validation for hiring O'Leary, Orsini said, "I knew him when he was national coach of the year [in 2000]. As a Georgia Tech employee and a Notre Dame alum, I knew him when he hit the bottom of his career. Now I know him as redeeming himself as a coach. Hopefully people will see that it does work out if you give someone a second chance and they deserve it."

O'Leary occasionally reflects on the last few years and wonders, "What if?"

But he never asks, "Why me?"

"Angry people live in the past and excited people live for today," he said. "I'm excited. There's nothing I could do about what happened in the past, so I don't look back too often. I move on."

Adam Rittenberg covers college football for the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald.




<a href='http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?id=2217362' target='_blank'>Comeback Coach of the Year: George O'Leary</a>

After a long stay in football purgatory, George O'Leary (9) doesn't have to flinch anymore when he sees his name in the newspaper or hears it on TV or the radio. If he's being mentioned this fall, it's probably in the course of a Coach of the Year conversation.

AP Photo
George O'Leary has guided UCF to the brink of its first bowl appearance.

The second-year coach at Division I-A young'un Central Florida (10) has his Golden Knights bowl-eligible (6-3) and still in the thick of the Conference USA title race (5-1 in league play and leading the East Division). This comes one year after UCF was the only team to go 0-11, and less than four years after O'Leary blew the opportunity of a coaching lifetime.


The Dash recalls a 15-minute window between Bob Davie (11) and Ty Willingham (12) when O'Leary was coach at Notre Dame. His dream job fell apart before it began when we found out that O'Leary's résumé said he was a former Cy Young award winner, ambassador to Dubai and the inventor of the cotton gin.


OK, those are untrue exaggerations of O'Leary's untrue exaggerations. But it was enough to force the former Georgia Tech coach to resign in embarrassment and effectively blackball himself with college ADs for a couple of years.


O'Leary went off to work as an assistant coach in the NFL, then turned up at bottom-feeder UCF -- where he went 0-11 in his first season. Talk about a free-fall from grace.


But it turns out the fluffed-up résumé wasn't career suicide after all. More than a flesh wound, but less than lethal.


UCF began this season with a 15-game losing streak, but O'Leary set a preseason goal of going to the program's first bowl game.


"At that time, a lot of [people] were … looking at me like I had four heads," he said.


At least. Had O'Leary even seen the schedule? UCF was playing seven road games. Nobody does that and earns a bowl bid.


Going bowling looked even less likely when UCF started the season by losing at South Carolina and South Florida. But the Knights turned it around by beating Marshall on Sept. 17, and have lost just once since then. And they're playing just a handful of seniors.


How much better have they gotten? Their six-win turnaround from last season is best in the nation -- one better than Penn State, which has seven home games this year.


From last year, UCF has improved a minimum of 33 spots in the NCAA national statistical rankings in rushing, passing, pass efficiency, total offense and scoring offense, as well as in rushing defense and scoring defense.


Thundering Herd coach Mark Snyder (13) said he knew UCF was due to break through "when I walked on the field. I looked at my defensive coordinator and said, 'That's the best-looking 0-17 team I've ever seen.' … With coach O'Leary, it was just a matter of time."


Now that the time has come, O'Leary isn't going to volunteer much on his personal redemption season: "I've enjoyed coaching a lot of young kids. I see a lot of improvement. … Coaching is coaching, whether it's at Georgia Tech or the Minnesota Vikings. When you see kids taking coaching and getting better, I think that's what it's all about."
11-12-2005 02:01 PM
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