George O’Leary was not always the man he portrayed himself to be. He was a football coach and that was it, for better and for worse.
Allow me to share some thoughts about a man I have probably listened to speak more than anyone besides my mother in the past nine years.
It is our natural instinct to search for heroes. In the modern era, our society has sought out the greats among us by turning to sports.
Charles Barkley once said, “I am not a role model.” I think he went a little far to hammer his point home, but he was rebelling against a backward culture we have created around athletics.
College coaches in particular are the ones we most deify. We love the power, the authority, and revel in the wins as they stack up at whatever powerhouse we call our own around the country.
Enter into this context retired UCF head coach George O’Leary. A man who simply never could fit cleanly into those manmade constructs of hero worship.
Despite the knowledge that the end of the line was drawing near at UCF for head coach George O’Leary, Sunday’s announcement of his immediate retirement was still shocking. O’Leary will always stand as a very significant and somewhat controversial figure in Knights football history.
There is no doubt he had a love-hate relationship with the Knights fan base. One can simultaneously recall the times of joy and disappointment that occurred under O’Leary’s watch.
I was always hard on O’Leary in part because I knew he had the ability to be a kinder, more engaging public presence. There are countless behind-the-scenes accounts of a coach who had a much different temperament than the sometimes bristly public version all of us got to see.
That does not mean everything he does when the cameras were off could be spun into a fairy tale, but shows he chooses to be a different man than the one we know from press conferences and program functions.
It is in that stark dichotomy where we can begin to piece together the totality of his story.
As a coach, there was also that nearly annual inability to name the right starting quarterback (see Calabrese/Hodges, Calabrese/Godfrey, DiNovo/Holman, among others). However, most of the coaching woes became afterthoughts in recent years, wiped away by Fiesta Bowl glory.
It will be the O’Leary personality rather than anything on the field I remember most. Many from the outside looking in at UCF would probably think he is a very simple person to figure out, but that could not be farther from the truth.
O’Leary can set a room off in laughter one minute and send things to a screeching halt with a scold the next. He can inspire in one instance and adamantly refuse to in another.
I think deep down, O’Leary wants to be loved by his players, his staff and the fans. There is something very intrinsic to who he is however that does not always allow that to be possible.
This hard-to-pinpoint quality makes it difficult, but not impossible to define the O’Leary legacy. Ultimately, he is human, not the free-of-fault kingmaker perhaps we all naively desire our head coaches to be.
O’Leary certainly was not a lovable grandfather like Bobby Bowden or a win-at-all-costs rebel like Jimmy Johnson. His story cannot be painted with the same broad brush as others because it just was never meant to go down like that.
In recent days, I have laughed and at times been exasperated with the way the most ardent of O’Leary supporters continue to view him. These individuals can see no wrong, as if there are no shades of grey attached to man with his fair share of public triumph and scandal.
I think that does a disservice to the O’Leary legacy and shows that we as sports fans are slow to learn. Understanding and accepting the good with the bad is a much more significant rationalization to come to.
So when remembering George O’Leary, do not forget the flaws and always hold the groundbreaking achievements in high regard. Understand the ways that he helped and sometimes stymied UCF football’s growth.
Perhaps the mixed story of O’Leary will help us all gain greater perspective about how we should view our favorite teams, coaches, and players in the future.
