True lies

Notre Dame, O'Leary both caught in a sticky web

This was never going to work out. When you hire your ninth or 10th or 11th choice, someone who was just OK in his last job and whose biggest selling point, evidently, is the fact that he has an "O" in front of his name … well, you could see early on that this one was doomed.

Still. We expected it to last longer than five days.

The sad, strange saga of George O'Leary and Notre Dame -- it was more like a mini-series, when you get right down to it -- crumbled to its pitiful end Friday, less than a week after the Irish selected the 55-year-old Irishman as coach of their storied football team.

A couple of lies O'Leary told waaay back forced him to quit his dream job only a week into it. A couple of things, like whether he really had a master's degree, or whether he really played football where he said he did.

They were lies, however big or small you see them, and they were out there for everyone to see, and high and mighty Notre Dame couldn't just let them sit there. So when the lies became known and O'Leary offered his resignation Thursday night, Notre Dame accepted.

You can get away with a lot in college football. Cheating, for sure. Slipping a recruit a few bucks. Come on. You can't be a head coach in the SEC without learning how to work over a rule or two.

But saying you were a football letterman in college when you weren't? When, in fact, you never even got into a game?

A master's from NYU?

This whole thing looked a little off from the get-go. When the Irish introduced O'Leary as their coach Sunday, you could almost hear the eyebrows raise all over the Midwest. O'Leary, though well-enough known as head coach at Georgia Tech for the past seven years, was hardly mentioned as a possible candidate.

But Oakland Raiders coach Jon Gruden pulled his name out of the running. Oregon coach Mike Bellotti also said "no thanks." Stanford's Tyrone Willingham was a no-go. Guys like the San Francisco 49ers' Steve Mariucci, and Bob Stoops, the head coach of the defending national college champion Oklahoma Sooners, said they'd rather stay put.

So the Irish settled on O'Leary. And, let's be honest, this was grabbing the wallflower after all the cheerleaders turned you down at the dance.

O'Leary was 52-33 at Tech. The Yellow Jackets were a disappointing 7-5 in 2001 after preseason talk about a national title.

Worse than that -- way worse than that, as far as high-and-mighty Notre Dame should have been concerned -- was the fact that O'Leary graduated only 33 percent of his players while at Tech.

The NCAA once caught him for making an illegal loan to a player, too, something that should have been a huge flag for Notre Dame. There was a disturbing report last year that O'Leary sent a couple of Tech tacklers after a defenseless player in a drill, all because the player missed a block. The player had to be attended to for 15 minutes and eventually left the team. His mother considered pressing charges. It was quite the scandal in Atlanta.

Still, when everyone else said no to the Irish -- this, clearly, is not the end-of-the-coaching-rainbow job it once was -- they went with O'Leary, who promised to get Notre Dame "back to where you need to be as far as the national championships."

It's hard to say who looks worse in this whole sad mess, Notre Dame or O'Leary.

For sure, O'Leary looks bad. Really bad. So bad, in fact, that he may never be able to get another job in coaching. Being a liar is one thing. Letting the lies live for a couple of decades is another thing altogether.

"I think they hire you because of what you are and not what they expect you to be," O'Leary told reporters after his hiring.

Maybe. But nobody knew what O'Leary truly was.

Notre Dame looks just as bad. The Irish lied, too. To themselves. They forced themselves into thinking that O'Leary, way down on their list of candidates, could be the man to resuscitate their moribund football program.

It was a simple case of a desperate school seeking a quick fix and settling on a coach with a name, an OK coaching record and little else.

The whole thing, from the very start, was a lie.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

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