Former UCF football coach George O’Leary was predictably blunt when asked his reaction Tuesday to reports that UCF will join the Big 12 perhaps as soon as this week while in-state rival USF is left behind to pick up the pieces in the crumbling American Athletic Conference.
“USF is finding out that most of the time in life, you get what you deserve,” O’Leary said.
Nationally renowned college football reporter Brett McMurphy put it even more bluntly.
“Karma,” McMurphy said, “is a bitch.”
O’Leary and McMurphy are referring to the mocking twist of fate regarding USF being left in the dust while UCF prepares to move into a Power 5 league that will afford the Knights more money, more prestige and more recruiting advantages than ever before. You see, it was USF that tried desperately for years to keep UCF’s football program from reaching big-time status by dropping the Knights from the schedule and blocking their entrance into the Big East.
At the time, the Big East was considered one of the six power conferences in college football with a lucrative TV deal and automatic access into what were then called the six major “BCS” bowl games. Back in 2005, when the Big East was expanding, the league chose USF over UCF mainly because of Tampa’s bigger TV market, USF’s superior basketball program and UCF’s football team was coming off back-to-back 3-9, 0-11 seasons.
In essence, USF was simply in the right place at the right time, but the Bulls were like the proverbial spoiled rich kid who was born on third base and then acted like he hit a triple. In the years afterward, then-USF football coach Jim Leavitt dropped UCF from the schedule because he thought the Bulls were too big-time to play the Knights. Meanwhile, then-USF president Judy Genshaft did her part to successfully block UCF from becoming a later addition to the Big East.
Central Florida politicians over the years called out Genshaft for her backroom blackballing of UCF. I tried to interview Genshaft a few times about the issue, but she always refused the requests and publicly refuted any notion that she attempted to block UCF’s entrance into the Big East.
McMurphy is now a national college football reporter for the Action Network, but spent much of his career as the USF beat writer for the Tampa Tribune. McMurphy covered the Bulls and the Big East and his reporting on conference realignment gained him national recognition. He reported then and reiterates now that Genshaft was instrumental in keeping the Knights out of the Big East.
“At one time, you could make an argument that Big East was actually as good as the ACC,” McMurphy explains. “Well, it would come up at the conference meetings that they should add UCF (and others) to try to grow the league. UCF was starting to gain its footing and was an up-and-coming program in a big TV market. Every time the subject of UCF would come up in those meetings, Judy Genshaft would basically shoot it down. How do I know that? Because every AD in the league told me that while it was happening and former commissioner John Marinatto told me after the fact.
“The way it worked was that if one league member had an issue with adding another program, everybody else in the league respected that decision and they moved on. It sounds asinine, but that’s how it worked. Finally, the Big East started losing so many teams — Pitt, Syracuse, West Virginia — that they became desperate. That’s when they were pretty much forced to invite UCF despite what USF’s wishes were.”
As fate would have it, in UCF’s first year in the Big East (which by then had evolved into the American Athletic Conference), the Knights won the conference, got the league’s automatic bid to the 2014 Fiesta Bowl and dismantled Big 12 champion Baylor.
McMurphy chuckles and points to that day — Jan. 1, 2014 — as the day UCF football became big-time and USF football became small-time.
Recalls McMurphy: “Jan. 1, 2014 is the day that UCF beat Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl and you know what USF did on that same day? I kid you not, USF called a press conference to announce that the school mascot — Rocky the Bull — had won an on-line contest and had been named mascot of the year. Judy Genshaft actually required the football coach (Willie Taggart) and all of the other coaches in the athletic department to be at the mascot press conference. Approximately, eight hours later UCF beats Baylor to win its first major bowl game.
“That sums up when UCF officially bypassed USF — and there’s been no looking back.”
There’s no denying UCF’s program is superior now in every way. The Knights have a much better team, much better facilities and soon they will be in a much better conference.
Honestly, it’s unfortunate what’s happened to USF because I truly believe athletic director Michael Kelly and USF’s current administration are much more astute than the leadership team of the past. Here’s all you need to know about how behind-the-times the university’s past leaders were: On Wednesday, USF will announce the groundbreaking for an indoor practice facility. In contrast, UCF’s indoor practice facility — the Nicholson Fieldhouse — opened 15 years ago!
If the Bulls had worked with the Knights instead of against them for all those years perhaps UCF and USF would be going into the Big 12 together as a package deal. Instead, the Bulls have their noses pressed against the glass as the Knights charge onward and upward.
The other day, somebody emailed me a newspaper article from when USF had joined the Big East and dropped UCF from its schedule. The article was written by old friend and former Tampa Tribune sports columnist Joe Henderson underneath the headline: “USF Is Moving On, And UCF Is On Its Own.”
Irony.
Cruel, cruel irony.
Most of the time in life, you get what you deserve.
