Friedgen Faces Old Friends At Georgia Tech With Unbeaten Team
10/9/2001 8:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 9, 2001
By PAUL NEWBERRY
AP Sports Writer
ATLANTA -- Ralph Friedgen and George O'Leary knew this day would come, and they dreaded it.
Making matters worse, these old friends-turned-rival coaches have to face each other Thursday night in a game with championship ramifications.
"Everybody will be glad when it's over with," said Friedgen, still unbeaten in his first year at Maryland. "I'm ready to get on with the rest of the season."
No one expected Friedgen to make his return to Georgia Tech with a ranking attached to his team. No. 22 Maryland (5-0, 3-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) is on top of the league standings as it prepares for the stiffest test yet, O'Leary's No. 15 Yellow Jackets (4-1, 1-1).
For the past four seasons, Friedgen was the offensive mastermind on Georgia Tech's sideline. O'Leary may have been the boss, but Friedgen had wide latitude to run things as he saw fit, all the while enhancing his reputation for a head-coaching job.
"I would not be in the position I'm in now without George," Friedgen said Tuesday in a conference call from College Park. "He allowed me the freedom to do some of the things I wanted to do on offense. I was also privy to some of the decisions a head coach has to make. Today, we're doing some of the same things they do at Georgia Tech because I was so impressed with George O'Leary."
Theirs is a long friendship, spawned in the early 1980s when they were rival recruiters - O'Leary at Syracuse, Friedgen at Maryland - working the same part of the country.
"I had a bigger budget," O'Leary quipped. "He only wanted to hang out with me because I could buy him dinner."
Actually, they hit it off right away.
"Personalitywise, we're very much alike," Friedgen said. "We call it like it is."
O'Leary is the godfather of Friedgen's youngest daughter. The coaches have waterfront homes about a half-mile apart on Lake Oconee in east Georgia, where they spend summers golfing together and will settle down as retirees somewhere down the road. (Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer has a home on the same lake.)
"When we retire, we'll sit around second-guessing all the other coaches," O'Leary said, grinning. "It will be the coaches corner."
Friedgen and O'Leary worked together for the first time in the 1980s on Bobby Ross' staff at Georgia Tech. They lived in the same neighborhood, carpooled to work and wound up following Ross to the NFL's San Diego Chargers.
O'Leary returned to the Yellow Jackets after a couple of seasons, becoming the head coach in 1994. Three years later, he lured Friedgen to his staff.
Quarterback George Godsey had already signed with Georgia Tech before Friedgen was hired.
"He told me he wanted to get to the point where he could get a head coaching job," Godsey recalled. "He told me that before I took a single snap. You have to respect him for that. Who wants to be second fiddle their whole life?"
Over the last three seasons, the Friedgen-led offense averaged 36.7 points and 444 yards per game at Georgia Tech. Joe Hamilton was runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1999. Godsey put up the second-best passing numbers in school history a year ago.
Finally, Friedgen got a head coaching offer after 32 years as an assistant. His alma mater called, wanting him to turn around a program that struggled for most of the past decade. He accepted right away.
"It was frustrating at times," the 54-year-old Friedgen said of the process. "But all things happen for a purpose. I'm very happy where I'm at. I'm very happy with my career. Looking back now, if I had become a head coach earlier I would never have had the success I had with Georgia Tech and the Chargers. Those experiences are very valuable to me, very precious."
Friedgen brought instant respectability to Maryland, which is averaging 34.6 points and 419 yards a game even though the new coach hasn't installed all the pieces of his complex offense.
In the meantime, Georgia Tech has continued to put up big numbers with new coordinator Bill O'Brien (39.8 points, 460 yards). Godsey, the nation's eighth-rated passer, suggested this week that he's pleased to be out from under Friedgen's dictatorial approach.
"Win or lose, I don't think it's going to be an embracing-type thing after the game," Godsey said. "We'll probably just shake hands and say, 'Good game."'
Friedgen had kinder words for Godsey.
"One of the hardest things I had to do was tell George I was going to Maryland," Friedgen said. "I was so proud of the way he played last year, how he grew as a quarterback. I would be hurt if he didn't think we had a good relationship."
