Coming off the most successful season in school history, George O’Leary has earned himself a four-year contract extension from UCF. O’Leary coached UCF to a conference championship in the inaugural season of the American Athletic Conference and capped it with the school’s first trip to and victory in a BCS bowl game by defeating Big 12 champion Baylor.
As first reported by Jeremy Fowler of CBSSports.com, O’Leary’s new deal will make him one of the highest paid coaches in the American. Though UCF has yet to make the contract extension news official, it is expected O’Leary will receive over $2 million in annual salary after incentives.
According to a database of coaching salaries compiled by USA Today, O’Leary was paid $1,534,728 in 2013. That made him the sixth highest paid coach n the conference. That salary would have been enough to leave O’Leary the fourth-highest coach in the conference this fall following the realignment changes seeing Louisville leave for the ACC and a coaching change at Connecticut. Cincinnati’s Tommy Tuberville is the highest paid coach in the conference, earning $3,143,000 according to the most recent coaching salary database.
O’Leary began his coaching tenure at UCF in 2004, turning a team that went 0-11 in his first season around to one that has won at least 10 games each of the last two seasons, played for two conference championships and won another.