Transformation of UCF is John Hitt’s football vindication
COMMENTARY: national story for the past year. But this was a sold-out stadium on ABC, not ESPN 4.
This was GameDay, three hours of the most coveted exposure a program could get.
This was Hitt’s greatest hit, even though he retired in June and most of the 20,000 crazies holding up signs behind Corso and Davis probably wouldn’t recognize the ex-president’s name.
From dawn to midnight on Saturday, it was the ultimate vindication of Hitt’s vision.
It would not have been his style, but Hitt would have been justified to hold up a sign that read, “I told you so!” It would have been meant for skeptics like me and critics of his grand plan.
Hitt’s ultimate goal was to make UCF a big-time academic institution. Football was a means to that end.
As the plan became reality, the Washington Post sent a reporter to UCF to find out what the heck was going on at the old commuter college.
“If you’re a state university in the South, and you want to be taken seriously, there are several things you do,” Hitt said in the 2015 interview. “You do a fair amount of research. You award a fair number of PhDs. And you play Division I football.”
And you catch a lot of grief for spending millions of dollars on football coaches and jockstraps. But Hitt knew nothing engenders school pride, loyalty and donations like a football team.
He got an earful when he hired George O’Leary in 2004. “O’Liar” had become famous for padding his resume and getting released after five days on the head coaching job at Notre Dame.
Hitt was accused of sacrificing UCF’s principles at the altar of athletics. But O’Leary was the right hire at the right time for UCF.
Playing the big-time game has inherent risks. UCF got on NCAA probation, though the violations were mostly with the basketball program. Then there was the Ereck Plancher death at football practice.
But playing the big-time game also brought a stadium students could walk to, New Year’s Day bowls and exposure you can’t put a price on.
Actually, you can. UCF commissioned a study that said last year’s undefeated season was worth more than $200 million in advertising exposure.
Ten more wins later (it’s 23 in a row now if you’re counting at home), the exposure just keeps coming. It’s no coincidence that enrollment has almost tripled since Hitt was hired.
There are plenty of challenges left for a school that’s frozen out of the Power 5 cartel. But applications are flooding in. Untold millions of Americans know Central Florida is far more than a directional school.
Whatever Hitt was smoking 20 years ago, it allowed him to see the future more accurately than most of us.
To paraphrase Corso, “It’s making your school big-time, sweetheart! Football is the vehicle.”
Saturday proved that UCF has definitely arrived.