AD Stricklin talks UCF, fan turnout

TAMPA — Scott Stricklin knows firsthand how passionate the UCF fan base can be.

Over the years, Florida’s athletics director has been on the receiving end of quips and barbs by the Knights faithful on social media, particularly when it came to a perceived snub by the Gators regarding football scheduling.

Ironically, UCF fans owe Stricklin and the Southeastern Conference a debt of gratitude.

The addition of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC was the first in a series of dominoes to fall that cleared the way for the Big 12 to offer membership bids to the UCF, Cincinnati, Houston and BYU. The Knights accepted and could join the league as soon as 2023.

“Texas and Oklahoma’s movement appears to have opened up an opportunity for them,” Stricklin said before the Gators’ game at USF on Saturday. “Maybe they’ll be nicer to me on Twitter.”

Stricklin spoke with the Orlando Sentinel. An abridged version of that conversation:

What did you think about having another Power Five school in the state with UCF joining the Big 12? Stricklin:

“I texted with [UCF AD] Terry [Mohajir] yesterday. They seem happy. Terry’s a good guy and I want good things for them. I don’t know about these [Power Five] designations going forward. I mean, they felt like it was a good move or they wouldn’t have done it. There’s a lot of good teams in that league.

“I used to say we need to schedule Power Five [teams], and I started realizing that’s not the right designation. It needs to be: We need to schedule quality opponents because there are quality opponents in non-Power Five leagues, and going forward there may be some teams in Power Five leagues that aren’t quality opponents.

“I don’t know if that designation is going to carry the weight going forward it once did. The SEC is probably separating itself in a lot of ways. The Alliance teams probably feel like they’re at a certain level, but there are opportunities for other teams to move up and down regardless of their conference motivation.

“UCF has done a great job positioning its program for several years through several ADs. [Former AD] Danny [White] deserves a lot of credit [and] Terry deserves credit for keeping it going. They seem to have gotten a lot of momentum.”

UCF’s move to the Big 12 shouldn’t impact your nonconference series? Stricklin:

“We went out and scheduled a lot of nonconference games of significance. We’re going to spend the next year as a league determining what our conference scheduling format is going to be and if we increase the number of conference games we’re playing.

“We’re going to have to go back and start moving games around in our schedule. It’s going to be a fluid situation until people land on [a conference format]. It sounds like some of the Alliance leagues that are at nine [conference games] may go to eight.

“I think there’s a good chance the SEC adds conference games. I would love for us to keep all the games we have, but we may have to shift the years that games are played . ... There may be an Alliance team that needs someone and you’ve got a game scheduled, so you just send them the contract and they take it over.”

You must be pleased with ticket sales and the crowds so far. Stricklin:

“Our student crowd is probably the best student crowd. … Maybe there’s an Auburn game a couple of years ago that was as good, but certainly for a nonconference game [FAU] it blew it out of the water. But you think about that we have like two freshman classes from the standpoint of going to these kinds of events. We had a whole group last year that never got to experience that and then we got the regular freshmen, so we had a lot of pent-up demand.”

You host Alabama for the first time since 2011. Would you like to see more conference games against teams like the Crimson Tide in the future? Stricklin:

“Oh, this is a huge opportunity, and the Texas-OU situation provides a great opportunity for us to dig in and look at how we schedule from a football standpoint. We need more variety.

“Of our eight SEC games right now, seven are the same each year in a 14-team league. It makes no sense. I know why we do it, but we have to get creative.”

Why does the SEC schedule the way it schedules? Stricklin:

“Because we want a championship game and we want a clean-cut way to [know] who’s going to the championship game. Divisions have proven that because in a 14-team league, if you just ranked No. 1 through No. 14 and took the highest-placed teams, you’re going to have years where tiebreakers aren’t forthcoming as to who those two teams should be because you won’t have head-tohead [matchups].

“We’ve got to figure out how to make sure we have the right teams in the championship game, but I think we can come up with a creative way to have more variety and rotation and see each other more often. There’s a tremendous opportunity here, especially as we add teams, whether it’s four years or five years there’s rational rotation where you can see everybody.”