UCF Head Coach George O’Leary is no stranger to speaking his mind.
Last week, SEC commissioner Mike Slive said that if reforms for the “power 5” conferences aren’t passed, then the conferences(SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12) would split off and form their own division–Division IV.
If this were to happen, UCF would be left in the dust along with many other up-and-coming FBS programs.
O’Leary made an interesting comparison to the Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Bianchi on the possibility of the conferences splitting off to form their own division.
“They sound like the South during the Civil War,” O’Leary told Bianchi. “If they don’t get their way, they’re going to secede and start their own country. … I think college football is in real trouble.”
UCF, coming off of a 12-1 season and BCS-bowl victory, would likely not get the chance to compete and recruit with the other upper echelon programs if the “power 5” does secede.
“The thing that’s disturbing is that college football has been fighting for years to create a level playing field and now they’re trying to go the other way and create an even wider gap between the haves and have-nots,” O’Leary told Bianchi. “I think some of these schools have forgotten where they came from.”
