USF- Jones beats them his first time out. O’Leary is 0-4.

Miami- O’Leary is 0-2

Florida- O’Leary was beaten 42-0

UConn- the defending national champions. O’Leary I don’t believe has had a shot at a defending champ, but did come close to knocking off Texas two seasons after a national championship.Memphis- a perennial national powerhouse. Not sure if Georgia football measures up but maybe close.

Here is what we need to be careful of. Right now UCF is a young program. We have no real identity yet. We could become a “football school” or a “basketball school”. And it is not just up to the athletic department, but also the fans. How do the fans decide? Simple. Let’s say you have enough money to buy season tickets to either football or basketball, but not both. Which do you buy?

At most schools that is a no-brainer. At Duke, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Syracuse or UCLA those fans would pick basketball every time. What do those schools all have in common? Their football teams all suck. Why? Because football players and coaches at the highest level do not like playing second fiddle to basketball players. Look at any high school. They take football more seriously than basketball. A case in point: Kentucky in the 1950s. They had Adolph Rupp coaching basketball and Bear Bryant coaching football. Think about that for a minute.

After a season in the early 1950s (might have been 1950), Kentucky was having their end of the year sports banquet. Bear Bryant who’s football team had a big year was given a gold watch. Rupp was given a Cadillac. Bryant promptly quit his job. Kentucky could have been the Alabama of football. But instead they chose basketball. Their football team has sucked ever since.

But wait? What about Florida? Florida State? Ohio State? Texas? They all have good football and basketball teams. That’s true. But again, in the scenario described above, which would their fans choose? Football. Football is king at all those schools. How are they able to also have good basketball teams? Simple. Basketball players are used to playing second fiddle to football. Look at high school. They have their season first. Every home game is accompanied by a huge pep rally. They have a homecoming game. Basketball has to wait until football is over. They play in front of smaller crowds. They may get a pep rally for the arch rival game.

So if the basketball program continues to impress, and I hope it does, it makes it just that much more important that football keep up. We already joined a basketball first conference. The Big East exists and thrives because of basketball. It would be very easy to throw all our eggs into the basketball basket. Pun intended. If we do, it could cost us football though.

Some would say “why would a coach want to fool with what is working?” This is a valid point. But in all fairness, standing pat or keeping the “status quo” can sometimes get you into trouble. There is nothing wrong with trying to get better. The trick is as a coach to learn when you need to make improvements or leave well enough alone. Unfortunately it seems, O’Leary missed it with Godfrey. This is not the first time a coach has tried to change a player and ended up totall;y messing him up. There is the story about how the New York Mets took a young Jose Reyes and tried to change the way he ran. He spent most of the next season on the DL with bad hammies.

Sometimes making adjustments can work wonders for a player. Sometimes the opposite happens. A good idea would be to wait until there is a sign there might be a problem BEFORE trying to fix it. So now it looks as if Rob Calabrese may have to go back to QB next season because UCF will likely be every thin at the position. They just lost a recruit at QB to Princeton. With Godfrey leaving that leaves Bortles as the only QB currently on the roster. So in the Spring Game either Calabrese is going to have to QB one of the teams or a true freshman who we don’t even have yet will have to.

St Pete= Marshall vs FIU. Beat Marshall. Should have beaten FIU

Hawaii= Southern Miss vs. Nevada. Should have beaten So Miss. Or at least been given the opportunity in OT.

Armed Forces= BYU vs. Tulsa. Should have beaten BYU. Probably should have taken Tulsa to OT.

Ticket City= Houston vs. Penn St. At the beginning of the season, UCF was being talked about as being a possible BCS buster. Instead it was Houston. However, with wins in some of these games we lost because of a fumbled punt or not being able to score in the red zone, or stop a late scoring drive, we could have gotten a shot at them in the C-USA title game. We could’ve been Southern Miss.

BBVA Compass= Pitt vs. SMU. OK SMU smacked us around pretty good. But that was the only loss we had all year that happened in. We could really have been 11-1 very easily and gone to Houston for the Championship Game.

So now sit back and watch all these games and wonder what might have been.

Let’s look back on the reasons UCF is not going to a bowl shall we? Reason #1. WE lose our first game of the season to FIU. FIU?? How do we lose it? We literally fumble it away. We give up the winning TD on a punt muff inside the ten. Not to be outdone, we put a new punt return man in there the next week against BYU and he does the exact same thing. Now, does the coach not bear some responsibility for this? Maybe I can see it happening once, but did you NOT make it clear to the next guy that he had better not do it? How do you lose two games this way, six days apart? Then we get hammered by SMU. Not TCU, not Texas, but SMU.

Then there was the UAB debacle. We lose to a team that was 0-6. Unbelievable.

Then we lose to Tulsa at home. Tulsa has about 450 students and $1.29 athletic budget. Yet every year they seem to be bowl eligible. And every time they play us without Kevin Smith, they whip our ass. In 2005 they whipped it WITH 24k. This time we can’t cover a guy in the red zone and then can’t tackle him. Then we can’t punch it in with a first and goal at the 2 yard line.

Then there was the Southern Miss game.  George gets a gift on a spectacular play by Bortles and Worton to tie the game, no wait, we’re not going to take it, We’re going for two. WHAT?? Have you ever heard one in the hand is worth two in the bush? You extend the game when you can. You DON”T put your team in another do or die play when they just survived a do or die play! If you keep rolling 7s and don’t know when to take your winnings and go home, eventually you are going to roll snake eyes.

And to top it all off, there was the ECU game, which was the last shot at a bowl game, and again we cannot punch it in from inside the ten to tie the game in the last minute.

So now we have taken a quarterback situation that was rock solid this time a year ago and turned it into a mess. Last year Godfrey looked as if he was on his way to stardom. Now we are left to wonder if he’s on his way out the door. Or will he be the starter next spring? Nobody knows. How does this happen? I don’t know. But under O’Leary’s watch, it seems to happen a lot.

Our running hero from the Liberty Bowl last year didn’t get going until the last couple of games this year. And the defense was awesome one week and pitiful the next. And it had little to do with the competition. There were games when for some reason we would forget how to tackle. These issues have got to be coaching. Because players have come and gone. But it keeps happening.

If you had acted quickly, you could’ve thrown your hat into the Rich Rodriguez ring. Now I understand the whole “being cash strapped” thing. After all, losing ten million dollar law suits will do that. But am I the only one who finds it a bit strange that the coach who caused the ten million dollar law suit is probably keeping his job because of it? On what planet does this make sense?

College sports teams are ALL about the coach. Ask a Kentucky basketball fan what the difference in their team now and five years ago is. It’s Coach Calipari. Ask a South Carolina fan what’s the difference in their team now and ten years ago is. It’s Steve Spurrier. Ask an Alabama fan what the difference between now and eight or ten years ago is. It’s Nick Saban. Look at SMU pre-June Jones. Look at them now. Look at North Carolina before Roy Williams and after they got him. Look at Ohio State hoops before Thad Matta and now.

College teams are as good as their head coach is. Period. So the credit or blame ALL falls on the shoulders of the coach. Sometimes an extraordinary circumstance happens and you have to step back and look at the big picture. A good example is Billy Donovan. He wins two National Titles in a row and then misses the NCAA Tournament twice in a row. Well, when you have your entire team turn pro at the same time and you have to start over from scratch, you have to expect a down year or two. I understand that.

But George O’Leary has been here for EIGHT YEARS! And he has had four losing seasons. In Conference USA? And we think we’re ready for the big time? We are not ready. Not by a long shot. We’re not ready as a program. We’re not ready as a coaching staff. We’re certainly not ready as a fan base.

I’ll give you an example: Ron Zook was hired at UF in 2002. He won 8 games in 2002, 8 more in 2003, and 7 in 2004. NO losing records. And he was run out of town by an angry fan base. Why? Because Florida is “big time”. 8-4 and 7-5 does not cut it there.  So a coach with three seasons where he was 23-15 was let go. At UCF that record gets you a ten year extension and a free pass for life!

George O’Leary started out losing his first 13 games. Why did he get a 14th game? Because we are UCF. So he wins some games from there and we end up in the Conference USA Championship Game and all of a sudden O’Leary is a great coach. So we give him a TEN YEAR extension?? Only to find out the following year, OOPS! We just went 4-8.  But not to worry, with Kevin Smith running wild, O’Leary comes back the next year and wins C-USA! OK, maybe he’s got this thing going in the right direction? Uh-oh. Another 4-8?

I’m starting to see a pattern here. I think it may be time to ditch the coach. I’m going to put up a “fire the coach” web site.  And another 4-8 season later following two winning ones which makes the total four losing seasons out of eight, we have less than 600 “likes” on our face book page out of 50,000 fans. How do I know we have 50,000 fans? I’ve seen 45,000 show up to some of our home games. And the UCF Nation face book page has 50,000 “likes”.

I cannot believe that with another 4-7 record, and a 49-51 record overall, we cannot get more than 600 people out of 50,000 to get angry enough to like our page. We suck as a fan base. We are doomed to be mediocre. Out of 50,000 fans we only have 12 mad enough to purchase a “Fire O’Leary” tee shirt? I know they are a bit expensive. But this is not about fashion or price. This is about making a statement. It’s about advertising. It’s about telling the other fans that you run in to that you are pissed off about this.

If this were Kentucky basketball, these people would be buying these shirts up by the dozens. Ask any UK fan if he owns a “Fire Tubby Smith” shirt. Odds are pretty good he does.  I know we are not UK basketball. But could we a t least strive to be a little bit like them? Why do you think Calipari took the UK job in the first place? He took it because of the passion of the Big Blue Nation. You want a good coach here? We better start showing we have a pulse.

4-7: That is our record this season.

49-51: That is our record under O’Leary

4 of 8: That’s how many losing seasons we’ve had under O’Leary

6 of 7: That’s how many losses this year by 7 points or fewer.

2: that’s how many times we’ve been nailed by the NCAA under O’Leary

1: that’s how many wrongful death lawsuits UCF has lost on O’Leary’s watch

1,000,000: That’s how many dollars every year we pay for all this.

568: That’s how many likes we have on our face book page as of 11:00 PM Saturday.

11: the number of t-shirts purchased for the “Fire O’Leary” blackout

Now if we can watch this garbage for eight years and cannot get more than 568 people pissed off enough to push the like button and 11 people pissed off enough to get a t-shirt and wear it to the game, then this is why we do not deserve to complain about anything. The Big East is probably re-thinking their invitation right now. And do we blame them? I wouldn’t. The only thing worse than a spoiled fan base is an apathetic one. And we have definitely got one of those. There won’t be 15,000 fans at the game on Friday. If 500 of us showed up with “Fire O’Leary” t shirts, we would stick out like a sore thumb. But we’ve sold what? 11? Get ready for at least two more years of O’Leary ball. That is unless he does us all a favor and retires. Notre Dame fans are somewhere thanking Touchdown Jesus that somebody thought to check the accuracy of his resume.

Before we put the So Miss game to bed, I would like to point out that the Golden Eagles own our asses. We have lost to them every time we’ve played them except for the 2007 game. That’s 6 out of 7 games. Anyone ever been to Hattiesburg? Anyone ever been to Mississippi? If you had you would be embarrassed by the fact that this school with a 27,000 seat stadium in the middle of nothing has beaten us six times in seven tries.  Seriously. Picture the jeans commercial with Brett Favre playing football with his buddies in a muddy field. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s what people do there for fun. That and run their four wheel ATVs through the mud and hunt and fish and maybe some gator trapping. And yet with out 45,000 seat almost brand new stadium and all our great high school talent within a stone’s throw from campus, we can’t beat them? Really? Not more than one out of seven times?

Southern Miss had this game in their hip pocket. We make an impossible comeback. We force a fumble inside the ten. We drive 93 yards in two minutes. We get a GREAT CATCH for a TD on the last play. WE HAVE ALL THE MOMENTUM!! Take the game into overtime and play defense you moron! And for those of you thinking it’s easy to second guess after it didn’t work, all you have to do is ask my wife. She was sitting right there on the couch with me begging him to kick the extra point.

Check my last facebook post during the game. I said well coached teams find a way to win. We find a way to lose. If our fan base doesn’t get pissed off enough to demand a new coach after THIS! Then we do not deserve to call ourselves fans. That stupid decision will cost us a bowl game and at least three extra weeks of practice. We have 6 losses this year and FIVE of them we could have won or sent the game into OT with one more touchdown. One more touchdown per game and we are Southern Miss right now. Does anyone think we couldn’t benefit from three weeks of extra practice?

Go to the Shop. Get your effing tee shirts. Show up to the UTEP game and LET”S END THIS CRAP!!

Heads have already rolled over this. A.D Keith Tribble and assistant football coach Kelly are gone. Head basketball coach Donnie Jones is suspended without pay for the first three C-USA games. So far George O’Leary has remained above the fray. He supposedly had no knowledge of the shenanigans. Which begs the question…actually two questions…

If you did not know that your assistant coach was using agents to land players, then how much else goes on in the program you don’t know? AND shouldn’t the head coach of the UCF football program know EVERYTHING that is going on especially when it comes to recruiting? When programs get into trouble, 99 times out of 100, it’s in the area of recruiting. If you are the Head Coach and you delegate 99% of the duties to your assistants, the ONE area you had better be kept aware of what is going on is recruiting.

This whole “Coach O’Leary was not aware of what was going on” therefore he cannot be held responsible? That’s BS! If it happened on your watch, then YOU are responsible. Have we not learned anything the last few days from the Penn State/Joe Paterno saga? JoePa didn’t stick it in any defenseless little boys. I’m sure he feels horrible about what happened to those kids. But it went on under his watch. So guess what? Joe is as much to blame as anyone. That’s why he is losing his job. That’s why his legacy is going to take a huge hit.

Both George O’Leary and Donnie Jones should be fired immediately. That’s the only way UCF can rid itself of the stink that is this NCAA mess.

Now at some places a .500 record is pretty good. Georgia Tech may even be one of them. But UCF should not be. Remember when O’Leary was first introduced as UCF’s new coach. His quote was “If you’re only interested in Top 25, then I’m not interested.” Did anyone envision eight years of .500 ball after hearing that? And did anyone envision if .500 ball was all we would get that he would still be here for at least 101 games? When your new coach makes a statement like that, he is promising you top ten rankings and major bowl games. If someone had asked him after that statement to predict how many wins he would have in his first 100 games, does anyone think his answer would be 49 or 50? So why is he still here?

He’s still here because we have a fan base that is not holding him accountable. We are 4-5 this year and are looking at a fourth losing season in eight years, and we have barely over 500 likes on our face book page. Does anyone think Jimbo Fisher or Will Muschamp or even Skip Holtz would be allowed to go 49-49? Doubt it. If Muschamp 12-12 he will be gone. If not, fire Will Muschamp tee-shirts will be all over the place. No we can do what we’ve been doing and show up to games dressed as empty seats. OR we can take a lesson from the school in Gainesville. They are not happy with the season they’re having up there by a long shot. But they had 90k at the game yesterday. When your AD sees a full house in a crappy season like this one, he is more likely to pay attention to the fan base when they are not happy. That’s how Ron Zook was shown the door before year three. And by the way, he was 23-14 if I’m not mistaken. O’Leary was 12-24 in his first three years.

So if you want to come and vent over here, welcome. If you want to come here and launch personal attacks on players and coaches, your comments will not be approved. But feel free to buy a t-shirt and join us at the UTEP game anyway.

Why should Tribble and Hitt spend the money to buy O’Leary out? The fans don’t care. Until the fan base gets pissed off enough to actually DO something, then nothing is going to happen. We just lost on out home field to Tulsa. Not Oklahoma. Not Oklahoma State. Tulsa. OK, Tulsa is a decent C-USA Program. But have you noticed none of the big conferences have mentioned adding them? This is the third time O’Leary has lost to them. The only two wins he has against them both came in 2007. So unless he’s had Kevin Smith, he has yet to beat them.

So it’s been 8 years. And this is where we are. How long will it be before we see the Knights play for a Conference Championship in a major conference at this rate?

Do you think a coach with a .500 record would last this long at a serious football school like Florida or Florida State? Hell no. I bet there would be thousands that would like a “Fire Muschamp” page if somebody put it up right now. Would that be fair? No. No coach should get fired in year one. But it goes to show how apathetic our fans are. You can’t put a coach on the hot seat without fans lighting the match. If the fans don’t care then the school won’t either.

Let’s talk about this game. Tulsa made all the money plays. Money plays are 3rd down and fourth down. They kicked our team’s ass on those plays. We couldn’t tackle them.We couldn’t block them. It looked like they wanted it worse than we did. How can a school with an enrollment of about 400 students in the middle of nowhere find better players than us? It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. They whipped us in the 2005 C-USA Championship Game. They whipped us at their place last time we went there. We think we can play in the big time? We can’t even beat C-USA teams consistently.

We go on the road to East Carolina and Southern Miss. That’s not going to be pretty. There’s only one thing left to do this year. Buy a black tee shirt on the FCO shop and meet up at the UTEP game. This garbage has gone on long enough.

I’m not trying to sell t-shirts to make money. The truth is I don’t make very much off them, (maybe a buck or two, which I would gladly put back into advertising)) plus I make enough money working at my regular job. I’m trying to get things like the black out going because it will get somebody’s attention to the fact that we the fans are getting sick of this roller coaster of bowl games one year and losing to UAB the next year. It’s been going on for eight years now. That is long enough. If the facebook page gets up in the thousands of likes and hundreds of us get together at the UTEP game wearing “fireoleary” shirts, then Hitt and Tribble have to notice. If you are a serious fan, you can take action. Spread the word. Cough up less than $20.

GO KNIGHTS!!

So I think it is safe to assume we will lose to USM. East Carolina beat Navy yesterday. Another one we can chalk up in the L column. UTEP beat Colorado State 37-17. Tulsa is 3-0 in Conference USA play. Memphis beat Tulane yesterday 33-17.

So find me a team we can beat at this point. We are looking down the barrel of finishing 3-9 If 3-9 or even 4-8 does not get this guy fired, especially this season when we were expecting to be a BCS Buster, then what will? There is just no excuse for this team to be this bad.