[LINK] Palm Beach Post After last season's success, there is a new
attitude around the UCF program thanks to O'Leary, who remained
positive despite losing his first 13 games at UCF. Now instead of talking about making it to bowl games, O'Leary is
talking about eventually bringing UCF to the level of Florida - which
the Knights will play on Sept. 9 - and Florida State and Miami.
- - - - - There weren't many who envisioned this sort of
turnaround when O'Leary returned to college coaching with UCF in 2004
after his brief tenure at Notre Dame in 2002. O'Leary resigned just
days after leaving Georgia Tech to take over the Irish after it
surfaced that O'Leary had fabricated portions of his résumé. His first year at UCF didn't look so good on his résumé either, but
an 8-1 finish in regular-season games last year needed no embellishment
and put the Knights in the C-USA championship game at home against
Tulsa. The Knights lost 44-27 but drew 51,978 to the Citrus Bowl and
accepted a bid to the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl to face Nevada, which edged
the Knights 49-48 on a missed PAT in overtime. The team's success in 2005, coupled with construction of a new
45,000-seat on-campus stadium scheduled for completion in 2008 has
created a buzz around campus, O'Leary said. Thanks to the winning, expectations also have increased. The Knights are picked to win the East Division in Conference USA this year and possibly play in a bowl game again. "We'll keep building upward and that means getting back to a bowl
game at a minimum," O'Leary said.But no one is laughing at O'Leary and
the Knights now after UCF had one of the biggest turnarounds in NCAA
history, played in the inaugural Conference USA championship game and
played in the school's first bowl game in by earning a berth to the
Sheraton Hawaii Bowl. "We're seeing more of them in recruiting but those are three
programs with great tradition," O'Leary said at the Florida Sports
Writers media days event Saturday. "Are we closing the gap? Yes. As
quickly as I'd like? No." "We're seeing more and more UCF hats now and that's a good thing,"
said O'Leary, who signed a 10-year contract extension in May which will
keep him at UCF until 2015.
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