UCF takes most ridiculous step yet toward claiming 'real' national championship
The University of Central Florida is completely unwilling and unable to get over its perceived College Football Playoff snub.
In fairness to the Knights, yes, the team finished a perfect 13-0, including a well-contested win over the Auburn Tigers in the Peach Bowl.
UCF was the only school to finish the 2017 season without a single loss on its ledger.
That being said, and it doesn’t get much more blunt than this, UCF did not qualify for the College Football Playoffs.
“The selection committee respected UCF,” Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff, told ESPN on Tuesday. “After all, they’re the group that put the Knights in the Peach Bowl. To qualify for the playoff, teams need to play tough schedules against good teams — that is the way for all teams to stand out and be ranked high by the committee. UCF is an excellent team, but you still have to take into account who each team played and defeated during the regular season.”
The Knights are in the American Athletic Conference, and while they can only beat who they play, many think that the AAC isn’t strong enough to promote a legitimate national championship contender.
The decision not to put UCF in the playoff “wasn’t right,” Knights coach Scott Frost told reporters.
“I was watching [the College Football Playoff selection show] every week, the committee sitting in a room and deciding that this two-loss team must be better than UCF because UCF is in the American [Athletic Conference], or this three-loss team must be better than UCF,” Frost said. “It looked like a conscious effort to me to make sure that they didn’t have a problem if they put us too high and a couple teams ahead of us lost. And oh no, now we have to put them in a playoff?
“But we just beat a team that beat two playoff teams and lost to another one by six points, and we beat them by seven.”
Frost was referring to the fact that Auburn beat both teams playing in the CFP championship game (40-17 over Georgia and 26-14 over Alabama) before falling to the Knights 34-27.
UCF has changed its Twitter handle to “2017 National Champions” to reflect the team’s mindset.
Perfection achieved. 🏆#ChargeOn pic.twitter.com/cLJb8MrJLw
— UCF Football (@UCF_Football) January 3, 2018
UCF athletic director Danny White is taking some ridiculous steps toward naming his school the uncrowned champions of college football.
First, according to WYGM-FM radio in Orlando, White will be hanging a national championship banner at UCF’s stadium.
“We’ve got a really mature group of young men who played 13 games and won them all. I think they deserve to be considered national champions,” White said during an interview Tuesday on ESPN Radio’s “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz.”
“We’re really proud of them,” he said. “Hopefully, in the coming days, a lot more people will become believers as well. We feel like we’re deserving of a national championship. By our research, there’s been 36 different years where there have been multiple champions crowned in college football. There’s been years where there were three or four champions crowned. … There’s going to be a CFP champion, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not a national champion.”
White also revealed that school will be holding a championship parade to commemorate its “national title.”
It’s a bold move, and there certainly is precedent in college football for teams to claim a national championship despite not playing in the officially recognized national title game, but this seems like a case of sour grapes.
The Alabama Crimson Tide and Georgia Bulldogs are slated to face off in the real national championship game Monday night.
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