Mike Bianchi: Bowden, Spurrier concur: UCF is No. 1.
Running off at the typewriter …
After all these years, Florida Gators legend Steve Spurrier and his old rival, FSU icon
Bobby Bowden, finally agree upon something.
That UCF should be national champion.
On Jan. 1, as UCF was about to play Auburn in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Spurrier was asked about the four teams in the College Football Playoff and who he thought would win the national championship. His response: “If UCF wins today, they should be national champions.” Spurrier, who also put McKenzie Milton on his Heisman ballot, isn’t backing down from what he said on New Year’s Day.
“UCF is a darn good team, they’re the only undefeated team in the country and they beat the team [Auburn] that beat the teams [Georgia and Alabama] who played in the national championship game. Why shouldn’t they be national champions?”
Meanwhile, Bowden told the Omaha WorldHerald: “I’ll be honest with you; they [UCF] deserve the national title in my opinion.”
Even Tim Tebow chimed in on UCF’s behalf when the Knights were being criticized for trumpeting their self-proclaimed national championship.
“I think it's awesome. Celebrate it!" Tebow said during an SEC Network appearance on the Paul
Finebaum Show. Sigh. If only Saint Bobby, the Head Ball Coach and Timmy Terrific were on the College Football Playoff Committee.
SHORT STUFF: Speaking of national championships, who would have ever thought that the quarterbacks of the two national-title teams — UCF’s McKenzie Milton and Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa — both would be from Hawaii? Not only that, but according to Milton, the two QBs played together in Little League, played against each other in high school and were roommates when they played on the same all-star team. “We’ve known each other since we were about 10,” Milton says. Obviously, both young men have heeded those famous Hawaiian words: Kulia i ka nu’u (Strive to reach the highest.)
Did you see where the Raiders are being investigated for violating the Rooney Rule in their zeal to hire Jon Gruden? It seems the only Rooney Rule the Raiders abided by when they hired Chuckie is the Andy Rooney Rule. After all, signing a slightly above average coach who's been out of the profession for nearly a decade to a $100 million contract is a bad joke, right?
By the way, Gruden should give Rich McKay and Tony Dungy at least 10 percent of that new 10-year contract he signed with the Raiders. As everybody knows, Gruden won the 2002 season’s Super Bowl during his first year in Tampa with a ready-made team put together by McKay and Dungy. He never again won another playoff game and was fired seven years later. … My top three candidates to replace Gruden on Monday Night Football: (1) Peyton Manning; (2) Charles Davis; (3) Marcellus Wiley.
Believe me, I get that our boy Blake Bortles isn’t exactly an elite-level NFL quarterback, but for former Bucs QB Chris Simms — now an analyst for Bleacher Report — to rank Bortles as the 70th-best QB in the league below backups such as Chad Henne (Jacksonville), T.J. Yates (Houston) and
Nathan Peterman (Buffalo) is idiotic. Then again, if anybody understands the traits of a bad NFL QB, it’s Chris Simms.
Somebody asked me the other day if the Orlando Magic are tanking. My answer: With the pathetic roster that former GM Rob Hennigan left behind, the Magic don’t have to intentionally lose; it just happens organically. … UCF athletics director
Danny White’s decision to go all-out in creating UCF’s “national championship” narrative might be the greatest sports marketing campaign we’ve seen in this town since “Lil’ Penny.”
Question: Which group of men and women were more predetermined about how they were going to vote no matter what the evidence showed them: The jury that acquitted O.J. or the College Football Playoff Committee that ignored UCF?