Orlando, Fla. – More than 1,600 people jammed the giant ballroom in the lavish resort hotel Tuesday. Gold bunting hung from the ceiling. The marching band played, and the players wore their new gold uniforms. Even master of ceremonies Lee Corso stood at the podium, looking only slightly foolish wearing the school’s gold mascot head.
Off to the side, George O’Leary smiled. Not a bad kickoff luncheon, he thought, for the only winless team in major college football last year.
O’Leary is college football’s Icarus. This son of a Long Island postmaster had flown too close to the sun. His dream job as head coach at Notre Dame lasted all of five days in December 2001 as he crashed and burned in a career flameout with all the trappings of a Greek tragedy.
A fudge on the résumé he supplied the Syracuse sports information office years ago came back to drop him to the bottom of the coaching food chain. Today he is back upright, if slightly hunched.
Coaching Central Florida to an 0-11 mark in his first year isn’t exactly South Bend on a November Saturday. But his bosses love him, a new on-campus stadium is coming, and how many coaches forced out for lying get ovations from a packed ballroom?
Plus, he still has his wry Irish sense of humor.
“The only thing really I thought I did was probably clean up everybody else’s résumé in the country,” O’Leary, 59, said with a smile. “I’ve never seen so many guys run to a typewriter.”
He has risen from yesterday’s tragic figure to today’s foil for Steve Spurrier’s long-awaited return to college football when South Carolina hosts Central Florida tonight on ESPN.
After his short stay at Notre Dame, he was brought back into the game by an old friend, Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Tice, who named him his defensive coordinator. He stayed two years before Central Florida came calling a year ago. Athletic director Steve Orsini was an associate AD at Georgia Tech when O’Leary was named national coach of the year there in 2000.
Asked about Notre Dame, O’Leary said, “It was devastating for me, but I’ve always been very resilient. … You move on. I was more concerned with my family and how they were handling it.”
He faces a long uphill road to respectability at Central Florida, where underclassmen make up 52 percent of the depth chart. He could teach all of them how grudges are such a waste.
“I’m still a Notre Dame fan,” he said. “I haven’t changed my faith.”
