Coach O’Leary’s retirement may have come at an opportune time for the 0-8 UCF Knights.
UCF is still recovering from the shame of an embarrassing performance against the Houston Cougars by means of a 59-10 beatdown; arguably the worst lost in school history.
The players will benefit from hearing a different voice and the program can move forward in finding a new head coach.
O’Leary did take the Knights to another level and was a great coach, but he was not the best recruiter and UCF is still not in a power conference. Although UCF is the second largest University in the Country and Orlando is a tourist hotspot.
“UCF is the place to be,” said interim Head Coach Danny Barrett at Monday afternoon’s press conference. “It still is the place to be.”
UCF is the only major University in Central Florida, but O’Leary and his staff were not able to sign the best players in the Central Florida area.
Time and time again we have seen the best recruits in the Central Florida area decide to go elsewhere to continue their playing careers.
In the 2012 recruiting class, UCF went after Central Florida tandem and teammates, receiver Alton ‘Pig’ Howard and safety Karl Joseph. Both had UCF among the top of their recruiting list but decided to go elsewhere.
Howard went on to have good career at Tennessee, but got dismissed from the team this season, his senior year. Joseph went on to have a stellar career at West Virginia and is among the top safeties projected for the 2016 NFL draft.
Chris Hayes of Orlando Sentinel recruiting caught up with Joseph as a high school junior.
“It’s a good school. I really like that it’s so close to home and my mom REALLY likes it,” Joseph said. I get along great with the coaches and the football program is coming up…it’s just a great place.”
O’Leary has said that players do not come to UCF because of him; UCF’s 2016 recruiting class currently ranks 109 in the Country, according to cbssports.com. It will be interesting to see how O’Leary’s retirement impacts recruiting.
“We still have to continue to recruit,” said Barrett. We still have young man that are committed to us that we wanna keep in our program. It’s business as usual…we still have our phone list of guys that we’re gonna call each and every week, each and every night if we get a chance to.”
UCF currently has six verbal commits and three of those commits are rated 3-star prospects by cbssports.com. The Knights have verbal commits from, receiver Malick Mbodji, cornerback Dontay Mayfield, and athlete Kwon Williams.
Photo Credit: Aileen Perilla
