Tuberville a match for UCF?

This morning while prepping for an enjoyable day of watching football and drinking Budweiser on the couch, I heard the doorbell ring which meant only one thing: someone wanted to sell me something that I would inevitably have no interest in purchasing. Today's salesman was actually a girl from the local high school who was handing out free copies of the Orlando Sentinel and selling subscriptions of the paper. Though I turned her sales pitch down, I took the complimentary issue and took a glance at the sports page to see what Mike Bianchi & co. had to say regarding today's college football lineup.

As I flipped to Section C of the paper, five bold little words caught my eye: Tuberville has eye on UCF

Needless to say I read Mr. Bianchi's column and it got me thinking.

I don't know who the "source close to Tommy Tuberville" is and quite frankly I don't care. The false hope associated with this news did more to wake me up than my daily cup o' joe. Yes, I have to admit, I tend to be a bit of a pessimist when it comes to good news surrounding any of my sports teams (see: Washington Redskins). However, I think it's safe to say that the George O'Leary experiment in Orlando is one gone terribly wrong. With the amount of money that the school, boosters, alumni and donors have poured into the program in recent years, Knights fans should and need to expect more from their football team. In no way am I directing any disrespect toward the players or fans, but I think some serious changes need to be made in the near future at the risk of losing season ticket holders and turning fans off once and for all.

O'Leary has a 29-39 record in his five and a half years at UCF while raking in roughly $1.15 million/year; a salary good enough to rank 53rd among NCAA FBS head coaches. I am not going to go into a "fire O'Leary" rant, but Bianchi's column mentions Tuberville, Charlie Strong (Defensive Coordinator, University of Florida) and Terry Bowden (Head Coach, University of Northern Alabama) as three possible head coaching targets for the UCF athletic department to pursue for the 2010 season. Obviously all three "candidates" would require equal or greater pay than O'Leary, but I have a feeling that any of the aforementioned might be capable of bringing a little more to the table than Ol' George.

The greatest disadvantage that UCF has is trying to entice prospects to the fourth (or fifth) best college football team in the state, and with the recent success of South Florida, things aren't getting any easier on the recruiting trail. But Tuberville, along with Strong and Bowden for that matter, all have the name recognition crucial to building the program that the Knights of Central Florida so desperately need for legitimacy.

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