A legendary college football coach resigned after five days for lying on his resume
In short: George O'Leary built a reputation as a turnaround specialist at Georgia Tech and UCF, but his career was punctuated by a spectacular scandal. Hired to lead the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in 2001, he was forced to resign just days later when his long-standing biographical inaccuracies were finally exposed.
George O'Leary’s career was defined by a stark duality: immense success in rebuilding struggling college football programs and a recurring pattern of personal and institutional controversy. After a successful tenure at Georgia Tech, where he earned national coach of the year honors in 2000, O'Leary was tapped to lead the prestigious Notre Dame program in 2001. However, his tenure lasted only five days. A routine background check by a reporter revealed that O'Leary had falsified his biographical sketch for two decades, claiming to have played football at the University of New Hampshire when he had never appeared in a single game. Further investigation forced him to admit he had also lied about earning a master's degree from a non-existent institution he called NYU-Stony Brook.
Following his departure from Notre Dame, O'Leary found success at the University of Central Florida, where he transformed the Knights from a winless program into a Fiesta Bowl winner. His 2014 team achieved one of the biggest upsets in the history of the Bowl Championship Series by defeating Baylor. Yet, his time at UCF was also marred by tragedy. In 2008, player Ereck Plancher died following rigorous conditioning drills. Subsequent investigations and a 2011 trial revealed that coaches knew of Plancher's sickle-cell trait, which posed severe risks during high-intensity exercise. While a jury initially found the university negligent, the award was later reduced due to sovereign immunity protections.
O'Leary’s legacy remains complex. He was credited with significantly improving the academic performance of his players at UCF, setting school records for team grade point averages. He also mentored a generation of assistants who went on to become head coaches, including Bill O'Brien and Doug Marrone. Despite these contributions, his career was consistently shadowed by the fallout from his early resume fabrications and the intense scrutiny surrounding the death of his player. He eventually resigned from UCF in 2015 after an 0–8 start to the season, ending a twelve-year tenure that had seen both unprecedented program growth and profound institutional failure.
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