The connections will abound for Georgia Tech’s road game at Central Florida on Saturday.
Former Tech coaching great George O’Leary will be on hand for the coin toss, having later coached at UCF for 12 years (2004-15). Tech athletic director Todd Stansbury will return to the campus where he presided as athletic director from 2012-15. Stansbury, in fact, was AD at the Orlando, Fla., school when the home-and-home series was established, in 2015.
O’Leary revived both teams, leading Tech to a 52-33 record from 1995-2001 after he took over a team that had endured three consecutive losing seasons. The Yellow Jackets won a share of the ACC title in 1998 and finished in the AP Top 25 for five consecutive years.
At UCF, taking over a team that had not been to a bowl game in its first eight years at the FBS level and then finished 0-11 in his first season, O’Leary led the Knights to seven bowl games in his 12-year tenure. That included the Fiesta Bowl in 2013, when the Knights finished 10th in the final Associated Press poll. He is in both schools’ sports halls of fame.
Tech coach Geoff Collins is one of four members of the Jackets staff who worked under O’Leary at UCF. Collins was O’Leary’s linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator from 2008-09.
Offensive line coach Brent Key was on O’Leary’s staff at UCF 2005-15, rising to offensive coordinator for his last two seasons with the Knights. Defensive coordinator Andrew Thacker was a graduate assistant for the Knights from 2008-09. Lastly, offensive quality-control specialist Will Glover spent two years on O’Leary’s staff (2013-14) as a quality-control assistant and then a graduate assistant.
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