The home of Disney World, Orlando, Fla., is full of fantasy and imagination. However, the best storyteller in town might not be Walt Disney himself, but rather the head coach of Central Florida, George O'Leary.
Entering his fourth season at Central Florida, who hosts Texas on Saturday, O'Leary will be forever haunted by a couple of fibs on his resume that were on there for years and didn't get uncovered until five days after Notre Dame hired him to be their new head coach in 2001.
After seven seasons at Georgia Tech with a 52-33 overall record plus winning the national coach of the year award in 2000, the Irish Catholic O'Leary appeared to be the perfect fit for Notre Dame. It was not to be. O'Leary put on his resume that he was a three-year letterman on the football team at New Hampshire and then received a master's degree in physical education from New York University. When the background check came out, it revealed that O'Leary did not play a down of college football in his life, and was a student at NYU. He never got his master's degree.
O'Leary admitted he put the inaccuracies on his resume earlier in his career and never went back and changed them. He resigned five days after being hired.
"Due to a selfish and thoughtless act many years ago, I have personally embarrassed Notre Dame, its alumni and fans," O'Leary said in a statement released after the incident.
UT communications studies professor Mark Knapp, an established researcher in lying and deception, says that resume-checking firms operate on the assumption that about 25 percent of the resumes they check will have some major representation in them, the most frequent being lies about education, particularly degrees obtained, schools attended and courses taken.
"Some have argued that O'Leary's punishment was too severe," Knapp said. "After all, he was a successful coach, and the falsification on his resume took place many years ago and he just forgot to remove it. The other side of that issue, however, is that O'Leary got some of the jobs that allowed him to become a successful coach with his false resume, so there is always the possibility that he was chosen for a job over a person who had a truthful resume."
Longhorn offensive line coach Mac McWhorter coached with O'Leary for two years at Georgia Tech.
"When he went to Notre Dame, it's a shame that the bio thing was such a big deal," McWhorter said. " I'm sure it was an oversight and that certainly wasn't the reason that they hired George in the first place."
It wasn't too long before O'Leary got back to work. Mike Tice, who played for O'Leary in high school at Long Island, hired him as the defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings in 2002. In his two years as the Vikings' defensive coordinator, O'Leary turned the defense from 30th overall to 10th.
"Probably the best decision I made that year was to get into coaching in the pros," O'Leary said. "If I hadn't been busy coaching I would have been sitting around feeling sorry for myself."
Central Florida gave O'Leary a second chance as a head college football coach in 2004. After going 0-11 his first season, O'Leary led the Golden Knights to an 8-3 record in 2005, leading the team to the Conference USA title game and a berth in the Hawaii Bowl. CBS Sportsline and Sports Illustrated both named O'Leary college football's coach of the year that season. With a 4-8 campaign in 2006 behind him, O'Leary and the 1-0 Knights upset North Carolina State the first week of the season and open up at brand new Bright House Networks Stadium this Saturday looking to upset No. 6 Texas.
A win over Texas wouldn't erase everything from his past, but it would definitely help give fans something else to remember him by.
"My mother told me that the good Lord does not close one door unless he opens another one," O'Leary said. "I think that things happen for a reason. It's not the setback that's important. It's how you handle the setback."
Even Disney couldn't think of a better script.
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