What If Discussion: George O'Leary

[Irish Envy]

Here is a fun topic to drive some conversation. What if George O'Leary never had the resume discrepancies and he kept the job.

Where do you see the Irish at today?

 

[bmf175]

Who?

 

[LuckoftheIrish86]

wow, good question. Never really thought about it. probably with not as bright of a future as we do now.

 

[bigdon]

O'leary is an excellent coach--arguably as good as Weis. As I see it we would not have the incomparable coaching staff that Weis has brought and I am not convinced Geo. could recruit with Weis. We are, therefore, better off with W.

If you're talking pure coaching skills O'leary is right up there.

 

[jiggafini19]

I didn't like the O'Leary hire. I liked the Ty hiring about as much.

 

[Irish Envy]

Reason I make mention is because he has literally turned around the Central Florida program in under two years.

They came into this season with a 15 game losing streak and they are 6-3. Most notably of all is they have 7 road games on their schedule. They're currently in 1st place in the C-USA East Division and I find that damn impressive.

While they've really only beaten up on C-USA teams, its still noteworthy and deserves attention since he WAS Notre Dame's coach for like 17 minutes and 32 seconds. Hah.

 

[iloveirish_12]

I think we would have be in the same place. O'leary would have the same number of years Ty and then would have sucked and been fired.

 

[jiggafini19]

The thing that bugged me about that situation was the fact the media was talking about his Irish heiritage.

How in the blue hell does that qualify him as the head coach of Notre Dame? It was the dumbest obvious fact discussed in the whole ordeal.

Then they turned around and hired Ty, which went off in a totally different direction. We heard more about the ancestry of these two than we did about their football credentials.

You know why?

Their credentials weren't all that great.

Not this time.

 

[IrishfaninLA]

The thing that bugged me about that situation was the fact the media was talking about his Irish heiritage.

How in the blue hell does that qualify him as the head coach of Notre Dame? It was the dumbest obvious fact discussed in the whole ordeal.

Then they turned around and hired Ty, which went off in a totally different direction. We heard more about the ancestry of these two than we did about their football credentials.

You know why?

Their credentials weren't all that great.

Not this time.

I usually agree with you on most points but not this time.
While I do not think O'Leary is as good of a coach as Weis, He is a much better coach than either Davie or Ty. Proof is in the results he has done at UCF. Not to mention he turned around a bad Georgia Tech team and made them respectfull.
If O'Leary had been at ND the past three years I am quite sure he would not have lost to the likes of BYU, Pitt, & BC. That being said I do not believe he would have been able to hang in there with SC like ND this year.

 

[Vince Young]

Based on what he did at Georgia Tech and what he's done at UCF, I think we would've done better than Ty's years, but we would've settled into a consistent run of above-average mediocrity and regular 2-loss and 3-loss seasons. (Hi, Llloyd!) But that sure beats the hell out of 5-6. O'Leary is a good coach.

But Charlie Weis is a great coach.

I think we're better off the way things turned out. If we'd kept O'Leary, he'd probably still be the coach right now, and C-Dub would still be in New England. Regularly going 8-3 or 9-2 would not have gotten O'Leary fired after 3 years. He would've gotten 5 years before the administration would've been willing to replace him with someone better.

At least this way, we got the fun of Ty's 8-0 "Return To Glory" in '02(and admit it, that was fun to watch, wasn't it?) and some good recruiting on offense, and then we kicked him out and moved on to Charlie and the Touchdown Factory.

 

[jiggafini19]

I usually agree with you on most points but not this time.
While I do not think O'Leary is as good of a coach as Weis, He is a much better coach than either Davie or Ty. Proof is in the results he has done at UCF. Not to mention he turned around a bad Georgia Tech team and made them respectfull.
If O'Leary had been at ND the past three years I am quite sure he would not have lost to the likes of BYU, Pitt, & BC. That being said I do not believe he would have been able to hang in there with SC like ND this year.

Personally, I'm glad we never got to find out.

It would have been really cool to have an Irish guy as coach of the Fighting Irish, though.