We didn't set out to find a skeleton in George O'Leary's closet. We had no idea there was a skeleton.

        Our intention was to run a nice feature story on the new Notre Dame football coach's days as a player at the University of New Hampshire.

        To that end, two of our reporters, veteran newsman John Hussey and New Hampshire Sunday News staffer Jim Fennell, made phone calls to former UNH football coaches, to former UNH players, to former UNH fraternity brothers.

        What we learned surprised us. Those who remembered O'Leary if they remembered him at all had no recollection of him playing for UNH. Not in a varsity game, anyway.

        George was a lot of fun to have around the frat house, we heard from several sources. O'Leary was a tough nut, we heard from others. But, all agreed, he wasn't a UNH letterman never mind a three-year letter winner, as stated in his official biographies at Notre Dame and his previous place of employment, Georgia Tech.

        When people around the state know the new coach of the world's most storied college football program isn't exactly what he purports to be and when the coach's apparent fiction is set in our own backyard we are duty-bound to report as much. There would be no nice feature story about O'Leary's New Hampshire playing days because, despite what was written in Georgia Tech's media guides and Notre Dame's press release and various stories that appeared in other newspapers, O'Leary never had any New Hampshire playing days.

        Hussey, who writes the weekly “Granite State College Notebook” column for the Sunday News, was the first to sense something was amiss, after speaking with ex-UNH coach Joe Yukica and three former players Tuesday night.

        Not only didn't he remember O'Leary, Yukica told Hussey, but Bill Bowes, an assistant at UNH under Yukica and later the Wildcats' longtime head coach, didn't remember O'Leary either.

        Ron Pappas, who became godfather of O'Leary's daughter Chris after rooming with him in college, didn't remember his friend getting into a game for UNH.

        Neither did O'Leary contemporary Tom Sawyer, who launched a long and successful coaching career at Londonderry High after playing linebacker for the Wildcats.

        Dan Drewniak, who played under Yukica in 1966 and 67 and for Jim Root in 68 and 69, said of O'Leary, “He was never in a huddle with me.”

        Enter Fennell, who had planned to begin work on an O'Leary feature Wednesday morning.

        Fennell followed up on Hussey's initial interviews and got an additional comment from former UNH fullback and O'Leary frat brother Mike Shaughnessy: “I never saw him play to be honest with you. I can't even say I practiced with George O'Leary.”

        When Fennell asked Yukica if there was any chance O'Leary had appeared in a game during the coach's tenure in Durham, Yukica replied: “I even went into a couple of game programs and didn't see his name. I remember kids who play for me.”

        At this point, we were willing to give O'Leary the benefit of the doubt. It was possible that somewhere along the line an honest mistake had been made and O'Leary had simply failed to correct it.

        Though he didn't directly respond to an interview request, O'Leary acknowledged through a spokesman, Notre Dame sports information director John Heisler, that he had never played for UNH and that, in fact, he had only spent two years at the school, after transferring from the University of Dubuque in Iowa.

        But, he told Heisler, he didn't know how or when the incorrect information wound up in his official biography.

        According to Notre Dame, the information came from Georgia Tech, where O'Leary was an assistant coach from 1987 to 1991 and head coach from 1994 until last week. According to Georgia Tech, the information came from Syracuse University, where O'Leary was an assistant coach from 1978 to 1986. According to Syracuse. . . (O'Leary supplied it himself)

        Our story revealing the incorrect information in O'Leary's biography ran in Thursday's editions. The Syracuse sports information document arrived later that day.

        The information contained in the document a form common to most sports information offices was handwritten and, coincidentally, dated April 1, 1980. In two telephone conversations with Larry Kimball, Syracuse's sports information director at the time, Kimball said athletes and coaches routinely filled out their own personal information forms.

        “I'm not aware of anyone filling one out for anyone else,” Kimball told Fennell.

        Again, we tried to contact O'Leary. We faxed a copy of the Syracuse document to Notre Dame, asking Heisler and Lou Nanni, the school's vice president of public affairs and communications, to relay it to their new coach. And then we waited.

        We would have a response by 7:45 p.m., Nanni said. No response came.

        Fennell contacted Nanni again. Notre Dame officials needed more time, Nanni said, before calling back again to say he wasn't sure when we'd get a statement from the university.

        We never did.

        After The Union Leader's story was published (Friday) morning, Notre Dame announced O'Leary had resigned. Notre Dame had looked further into his background and found he'd also lied about earning a masters degree.

        This wasn't the story we had set out to write. It wasn't an ending we'd sought. But we make no apologies.

        We did our job.

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