UCF Scandal

Iliana Limon |Sentinel Staff Writer

July 21, 2008

 

UCF Coach George O’Leary declined to answer questions from the Orlando Sentinel and barred his players from granting interviews with the newspaper during Conference USA media day on Sunday.

He also refused to speak with other reporters if a representative from the Sentinel was present at the UCF table during the only session for print reporters at media day.

O’Leary said last week he would not speak with the Sentinel until the newspaper corrected errors in its coverage of Ereck Plancher’s death.

The newspaper has asked UCF officials to outline the mistakes, but the school has declined to discuss the errors in detail.

Conference USA officials and Ryan Powell, the media relations representative for the UCF football team, attempted to mediate the situation and allow a reporter to sit at the UCF table without asking questions, but O’Leary would not change his stance.

“We are sensitive to the needs of the Orlando Sentinel to cover the University of Central Florida, and we’re also sensitive to the passion Coach O’Leary brings to his job,” Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky said. “It’s our hope that this issue can be resolved so that Central Florida fans can enjoy coverage of their team throughout the football season.”

Orlando Sentinel

What gives with this guy and this school?  A player dies and the head coach pouts about errors in the reporting but refuses to identify the errors?  Sounds like a smokescreen to me.  There is too much that does not add up.

Kyle Hightower, the esteemed reporter at the Orlando Sentinel features a story on his blog on the most recent felony acts available.

Hightower reports that sophomore UCF football player Ricky Kay was suspended from the team after he was charged with a felony and a misdemeanor for an incident that occurred on campus and caused over $5,000 in damage.

Kay, 19, was charged with preventing or hindering firefighter equipment (a third degree felony) and misdemeanor damage of property. He was arrested Saturday night. He posted $1,100 bond and was released from the Orange County jail.

Read all the sordid details at OrlandoSentinel.com.

It just doesn’t seem to end over there at Mickey Mouse U.

which end of the bat Jay Berman was allegedly attempting to cram up the chute of the equipment manager. Yes, call me demented. Call me sordid. Call me anything. My mission is to report on the yahoos to the east at UCF.

What would possess a guy his age to allegedly engage in bat rape? That’s just queer.

A couple years ago he allegedly tried to choke a kid in the dugout, now he allegedly wants bat-sex? Damn right. I’d fire him too.

So what’s next?  O’Leary allegedly shoving a football somewhere inappropriate?

Too much.

and do just one search to find

Former UCF Football Star Sentenced To 5 Years For Armed Robbery

Charles Lee was stone-faced Thursday as he pled no contest to the robbery charge as part of a negotiated settlement with the state.

Lee was arrested December 5, 2007, a week after he held up two students at Pegasus Landing, an off-campus student housing complex near UCF. Lee stole more than $11,000 in cash from his victims at gunpoint.

Blah, blah, blah…read more on the UCF football player by visiting WFTV.com

Yes indeed, sailing my little yacht in the Atlantic. But who really cares? I do have a volunteer staff here that doesn’t do much. That’ll teach me to consider the lower waged UCF applicants. They’ll write anything, if there is a lunch involved. But UCF ain’t buying lunches these days. Anyway, I have had some email lately. And I know you guys are just teasing, asking me who’s the latest UCF joker to get busted. Well, I don’t know. I guess I need to wade through the obvious candidates and look past the Jay Bergman rape allegations and the George O’Leary/Keith Tribble blatherings to answer these queries. Give me a day or two. The UCF universe is full of fun stuff. It’s hard to keep up and live a life normal for folks that don’t kneel for the UCF bat. Ha. Be back shortly.

According to published reports, UCF continues its backwards slide:

Five teams moving ahead and five in reverse

Five in reverse:

four on the list omitted in the interest of brevity

UCF. A season of hope has been crushed by the death of wide receiver Ereck Plancher during conditioning drills — and players anonymously speaking out against coach George O’Leary’s practice/conditioning tactics. All of that talent — and there’s enough for another C-USA title — means nothing now. The team is fractured, and it will take more than just one season to heal.

Link to SI story 

There. If anyone needed an established mag like SI to confirm the fact UCF is going backwards, now you have it. Happy Muthas Day.

This is too sick EVEN for our staff.

I hope you UCF people find the right vehicle for repentance.

Disgusting.

Friday, May 02, 2008 12:21:45 AM

ORLANDO — News 13 has learned the University of Central Florida fired baseball coach Jay Bergman because of allegegations of harassment.

Bergman has been coaching the Knights for more than 25 years.

The school said he’s being fired because of a personnel issue. But sources close to the school told News 13 it was due to allegations of harassment from a fellow worker in the athletic department.

Bergman did not accompany the team to New Orleans for its most recent round of games.

The school only released a short statement saying a national search will begin for his replacement.

The Knights have 10 games left during this year’s regular season.

Link to story at 13 News

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Man, it just keep getting funnier over there at UCF. Scandal karma killin’ you guys.

From Mike Bianchi’s Orlando Sentinel column:

Short stuff: UCF Coach George O’Leary continues to take shots at the Sentinel for our reporting on the Ereck Plancher story. O’Leary spoke to a booster club in Brevard County Thursday night and questioned the motives and even the authenticity of the four football players who spoke anonymously to the Sentinel in the aftermath of Plancher’s death.

“I don’t want to dignify any comments by responding to unnamed sources,” O’Leary told Florida Today columnist Peter Kerasotis. “Who knows who they were, or if they were even players?”

We have now reached the irony of all ironies: George O’Leary accusing somebody else of making stuff up. . . .

no further comment necessary….

In our break from the Plancher cover-up we continue our look at shining examples of the UCF football program. This time it’s poster boy for the UCF Home Invasion Task Force, Charles Lee.

From the archives (December 6, 2007):

Former UCF Football Star Charged In Home Invasion

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — From running to the end zone to running from the law, a man considered one of the University of Central Florida’s greatest football players was arrested at his alma mater Wednesday night. Charles Lee, Jr. also played for the Orlando Predators and earned a Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Bucs.

Lee was a standout wide receiver. Now he’s in jail accused of stealing $11,000 in a home invasion robbery.The Pegasus Landing Apartments near UCF is just one of the student apartment complexes plagued by robberies and burglaries this semester. Word that a former student and star athlete may be behind some of the crime is both a shock and a relief.There were many touchdowns during the glory days of college for Charles Lee, but Thursday a very different kind of notoriety became part of Lee’s resume. A judge denied bond to the former receiver after his arrest for a home invasion at the Pegasus Landing Apartments.Students are shocked.”To have such a resume like that. You just downgraded yourself. So I wouldn’t be surprised. I think the police did what they had to do,” said student BJ Johnson.Just a few years ago, Lee was a media star, even earning a Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers just four years ago.

Now, UCF police are trying to figure out how many crimes Lee is connected to.

“One guy was holding me down with his foot, gun to the back of my head. The other guy was going through my drawers and my closet and if I didn’t tell him where my valuables were he would kill me,” robbery victim Nicholas Rind told Eyewitness News in November.Now police will are trying to solve more crimes with Lee behind bars. More charges and arrests may be to come.”It’s a good thing that they caught him, definitely,” said student Mike Willey.

Before his arrest Wednesday night, things seemed to be going downhill for Lee. He’d lost his spot with the Orlando Predators in April and been convicted and sentenced for robbery in June. He also auctioned off his Super Bowl ring just three years after he earned it.Eyewitness News requested an interview with Lee on Thursday. Jail officials said he declined with some very colorful language.

View the entire story at WFTV.com