UCF AD: Media’s bias bad, frustrating

Why doesn’t ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit and the other torch carriers for the Privileged Power 5 Playoff Invitational — aka The College Football Playoff — just come out and admit there is no room at the inn and no seat on the bus for non-entitled programs like UCF?

At least this would be honest and above board. Instead, Herbstreit and many others in the elitist media have become mouthpieces for Bill Hancock, the executive director of the College Football Playoff who keeps insisting there is a “path” for UCF to compete for a national championship. What Hancock doesn’t say is that this so-called path is the sports version of climbing Mount Everest naked, paddling across the Pacific Ocean in a rowboat, navigating the Amazon rainforest without mosquito repellent and then walking across the Sahara Desert without a canteen.

Instead, Herbstreit and many others in the national media have created a false narrative that UCF is trying to pad their record by

ducking marquee games with big-time Power 5 opponents when the truth is big-time Power 5 opponents want nothing to do with scheduling UCF.

“The P-5 bias with a lot of the national talking heads is not good for the game,” UCF athletics director Danny White said Wednesday during an interview on my Open Mike radio show. “It (the Power-5 bias) is growing and growing and getting to the point where it’s not even factual.”

A perfect example came on Saturday when Desmond Howard was on my favorite show, ESPN’s College GameDay, and said UCF should start scheduling more “mid-level” Power 5 teams. Um, Desmond, you might want pick up a UCF schedule because that’s what the Knights have been doing for years.

“(Playing mid-level Power 5 teams) is exactly what our scheduling model is because I can’t get higher level Power 5 teams to play us home and home,” White says.

This year, UCF scheduled North Carolina and Pitt. Last year, it was Maryland and Georgia Tech. The year before that, it was Michigan and Maryland. The year before that, it was Stanford and South Carolina. The year before that, it was Penn State and Missouri. Guys, it’s not really that hard to click on a link to call up UCF’s past schedules. Either Herbstreit and Howard are being disingenuous or lazy. Either way, it’s not acceptable for otherwise creditable and reputable broadcasters.

This is the problem when the national media starts discussing UCF: For the most part, they’re uninformed and don’t really know what they’re talking about. That being said, Herbstreit and Howard should know better. They’ve been around college football long enough to know that schedules are made two or three years in advance, not two or three months in advance. It’s not like UCF can just call up Alabama and Clemson in August and say, “Hey, you want to play us this year?”

I always just laugh when guys like Herbstreit say UCF needs to be more like Boise State was back in the day when the Broncos traveled the country, taking on all comers in “play-for-pay” away games with big-name opponents. Question: Where exactly did that scheduling strategy get them? Last I checked, Boise State never played for a national championship and are still stuck in the Mountain West Conference.

White’s philosophy — and I think it’s a good one — is to schedule two-game series with Power 5 opponents who will agree to play one of those games at UCF’s Spectrum Stadium. The reason: White and his staff have significantly grown the season-ticket base not only by winning, but by giving fans at least one home game per year against a Power 5 opponent. In addition, UCF makes about $2 million per home game and that number is growing exponentially as UCF’s season-ticket base grows.

White, who runs a financially strapped athletic program as it is, simply can’t afford to give up a big home payday to go on the road. But, of course, the college football elitists believe that UCF, which is already at a huge financial disadvantage because it doesn’t cash an annual $40 million TV check like Power 5 teams do, should take an even bigger fiscal hit by giving up their home games and going on the road.

“We don’t believe in buy games [games where Power 5 teams pay opponents to come play a single game in their stadium] because we’re building a fan base,” White says. “We sold more than 10,000 new season tickets going into this year. You can’t build a fan base and a season-ticket base without having quality opponents in your stadium.”

Besides that, it’s simply inaccurate to say UCF doesn’t try to schedule headline games with marquee Power 5 opponents. Exhibit A: When UCF scheduled North Carolina for this season, it was August 2016 and the Tar Heels were coming off an 11-win season during which they won the ACC’s Coastal

Division and lost to Clemson 45-37 in the conference championship game. Is it UCF’s fault that North Carolina now stinks and this year’s game with UNC was ultimately cancelled by Hurricane Florence?

Last year, UCF’s strength of schedule was the stated reason the Knights didn’t get a sniff of the College Football Playoff semifinals even though they were the only unbeaten team in the nation. Did the playoff committee know UCF was originally scheduled to host Texas last season and Texas bought out of the contract and played San Jose State at home instead?

And let’s be honest, shall we? UCF’s strength of schedule is just a convenient excuse to exclude the Knights from the playoff. Near the end of last season, UCF and Wisconsin were the only two unbeaten teams in the country and had nearly an identical strength of schedule, but Wisconsin was ranked No. 8 by the playoff committee; UCF was ranked No. 18.

When I asked Hancock during the summer how that could be considered fair and equitable, he replied, “I don’t think the numerical ranking of the strength of schedule is as important as the committee looking at the schedules side-by-side.”

Translation: The College Football Playoff Selection Committee and their friends in the media are partial to the Power 5 name brands and always will be.

Every other sport in America, from the Little League level to the professional level, has a playoff system that gives access to everybody. Except college football. Instead of spewing false narratives and trying to the cloud the issue with strength of schedule, why won’t Herbstreit and his ESPN colleagues simply admit that their College Football Playoff is nothing more than a made-for-TV Power 5 Invitational?