UCF gets one last shot with beloved Frost
One last flame. One last game. One more chance. One more dance. “These coaches taught us how to love each other,” UCF team leader Shaquem Griffin says.
“These players are going to be special to me for the rest of my life,” coach Scott Frost says.
One of the great love affairs in college football history comes to an end today when an amazing group of players and an incredible staff of coaches come together for one final game as the unbeaten 12th-ranked UCF Knights take on No. 7 Auburn in the Chickfil-A Peach Bowl.
The torrid love affair started two years ago when Frost and his staff took over a winless and grinless team with a broken spirit and bereft of hope. Longtime former coach George
O’Leary’s final season turned into such a mess that O’Leary retired early and left the wayward team to a group of bickering assistants who were pointing fingers and fighting among themselves. The result was an 0-12 season and a locker room that was fractured and dysfunctional.
“We were a team that didn’t care about each other,” Griffin remembers. “It wasn’t a team at all; it was a bunch of different groups and a bunch of different individuals who were worried about themselves. And it wasn’t just the players who were divided; it was the coaches and the players and everybody.”
In Frost’s first meeting with the team, he talked about coaches caring about players and players caring about coaches. He talked about everybody pulling in the same direction and being part of something bigger than themselves. A new mantra was born: “One team, one family.”
Frost also had a message for UCF’s beleaguered fan base that very first day on the job: “We’re gonna have fun. It’s going to be a really entertaining style of football. We’re going to go a mile a minute around here. Fans better buckle their seat belts because we’re going to punch the accelerator and go fast.”
Faster than we ever could have imagined. Faster than anybody in college football has ever traveled. In the history of college football, there has never been a team that went from 0-12 to 12-0 in two seasons. Two years ago, the Knights were ranked dead last — 127th out of 127 Football Bowl Subdivision teams — in total offense. This year, they have the nation’s No. 1 scoring offense.
“That seems like a lifetime ago,” Frost says of his first day on the job at UCF. “The first thing we had to do was get them to enjoy playing football again and to believe again. In talking to the players this week, we’re light years from where we were then, and I love where the program is right now and I look forward to watching them win a lot going forward.”
Of course, Frost will be watching from afar as the head coach of Nebraska while UCF moves forward under new coach Josh Heupel. But first comes today’s Peach Bowl against heavily favored Auburn in a game that will be emotional and sentimental for players, coaches and fans.
The game is important for many reasons — past, present and future. A UCF victory would make this team the first one in school history to finish unbeaten. It would also serve notice to the College Football Playoff Committee, which snubbed the Knights for much of this season and ranked multiple two- and three-loss Power 5 teams ahead of them. If the Knights beat SEC powerhouse Auburn, it would catapult them into the playoff conversation heading into next season.
The magnitude of the game and the dedication to the players is why Frost insisted on coaching this team in a bowl game even though he accepted the Nebraska job a month ago. There were some naysayers who believed Frost wouldn’t be fully committed to coaching UCF while also trying to recruit for Nebraska. They thought he would just be a figurehead coach, showing up at UCF practices periodically whenever convenient while offensive coordinator Troy Walters ran the team on a day-to-day basis.
Frost quickly dispelled that notion on the first day of bowl practice when, even though he was battling the flu, he held a news conference, ran UCF’s practice, jumped on a private jet, flew to California on a Nebraska recruiting visit, flew overnight back to Orlando, landed at 6 a.m. and ran UCF’s second practice … while vomiting on the sideline.
“Our whole staff ’s No. 1 priority has been and always will be the players we’re coaching,” says Frost, who didn’t miss a single bowl practice. “That’s why we’re in this business. We feel the right thing to do is to be 100 percent committed and dialed in to helping these young guys win this bowl game.” One last game. One last flame. One more chance. One more dance. “It’s going to be hard to say goodbye,” Griffin says.
It always is when the love is so strong and the ties are so binding. One team, one family. One last time.