UCF draws praise for unbeaten season.
ATLANTA — College football leaders don’t seem to mind UCF claiming it has won a national title. Just don’t ask them to call the Knights the sole champions.
“I think that’s UCF’s opinion,” Georgia coach
Kirby Smart said Saturday when asked about the Knights’ claim after finishing as the only undefeated college football team in the country. “If I was at UCF, I’d probably do the same thing.”
Smart’s mentor, Alabama coach Nick Saban, also didn’t take much away from the declaration.
“I’m fine with it. [It] doesn’t mean anything to anybody but them,” Saban said. “They should be proud of the season they had. I know how hard it is for — we’ve only had one undefeated season, I think, in all the time I’ve been around. It’s a difficult accomplishment. I think when players accomplish that, they should feel good about what they’ve accomplished.”
College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said you have to be impressed with UCF’s “joyful exuberance.” UCF athletics director
Danny White has led the title charge, insisting the football team’s 13-0 record and win over No. 7 Auburn in the Peach Bowl meant the team should be known as national champions.
“They’ve had a great season and a terrific performance in the bowl game and it was a season that they will remember forever but the committee has to consider who you play. That’s part of it,” Hancock said. SEC commissioner Greg
Sankey, who cut his teeth in college athletics as commissioner of the Southland Conference, remembers seeing Daunte Culpepper and UCF taking on McNeese State in 1995.
“I don’t take anything away from the undefeated season that the University of Central Florida has experienced,” Sankey said. “I’ve watched their journey and respect the program but the national champion will be determined in a game Monday evening in Atlanta between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia.”
ESPN’s Chris Fowler said he understands UCF’s frustration over being excluded from the playoff semifinals.
“They did it the only way they could, which was go out and make a strong statement in the bowl game against a highly regarded opponent,” said Fowler, who will be calling the nationaltitle game. “I thought that was nice. I think UCF has been a tremendous story.”
Nobody understands UCF’s frustration more than Mid-American Conference commissioner Jon Steinbrecher. He watched last season as an undefeated Western Michigan team failed to crack the top 10 of the College Football Playoff rankings, reaching as high as No. 15 before losing 24-16 to Wisconsin in the Cotton Bowl.
“Danny is a great promoter and I understand what he’s doing,” Steinbrecher said of the Knights’ athletics director.
UCF isn’t the first school to claim a national championship, with Alabama and Auburn among the programs claiming to have won past national titles based on records or obscure polls.
Steinbrecher believes some day we’ll see nonautonomous teams qualify for the playoff semifinals, but he contends that it will require more year-to-year consistency from programs.
“What I think I would say looking at four years of data is that for a school coming out of one of the non-autonomous conferences, it’s probably a multi-year process,” Steinbrecher said. “If you’re not highly ranked or you don’t have a long pedigree behind you, it’s going to be very difficult for you to jump into that top 10 in one year. It’s evident now, if UCF goes out next year and does the incredible again and pulls off what they did this year, I would say yeah, they’re probably going to be in the playoff.”
Hancock, meanwhile, contends that the current playoff system allows for a non-autonomous team like UCF a fair shot at the semifinals.
“I think it will happen,” Hancock said, noting the Houston Cougars nearly accomplished the feat in 2015. “... The mantra still holds for everybody: play a good schedule, win your games and you’re going to be in the hunt for this. And it’s true for everybody.”
Alabama offensive line coach Brent Key, who spent a decade at UCF as an assistant coach, watched the Knights’ perfect season from afar and couldn’t be happier for the players, many of whom he helped recruit.
“I’m really, really happy for them,” said Key, who talked and texted with several players after the Peach Bowl win. “Telling them congrats and good luck and I’m really, really happy for their families. What they’ve gone through with the ups and downs and ups again. It’s a great group of guys to be able to do that.”
Key also believes this season will draw more attention to UCF.
“I think it’s good for Group of 5 schools. Having been a coach in the Group of 5 for a long time, them doing that more than anything is grabbing attention to a school like UCF. And stringing that attention to them and saying ‘Hey, we are somebody.’ You always hear, ‘You need to go beat this team, you need to go beat that team.’ Well, when you do those things, you need to get that attention.”