South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Who needs Power 5?
UCF will soon have same playoff access as Gators, ’Noles, ’Canes
For years and years, UCF’s fans, coaches and administration dreamed and schemed, plotted and planned, crusaded and campaigned to get a bid into one of college football’s Power 5 conferences, but now the Knights can finally stop shamelessly begging for that elusive invitation into one of the big-boy leagues.
Now with the news that broke earlier this week that the College Football Playoff is likely expanding to 12 teams, a case could be made that UCF has just as good a chance of getting into a postseason playoff and competing for a national championship as the Florida Gators, the Florida State Seminoles or the Miami Hurricanes.
The new 12-team playoff format, which many college football insiders are saying could be approved as soon as next week, will give a playoff berth to the six highest-ranked conference champions as well as six at-large teams.
What does that mean? Well, because there are just five Power 5 leagues and the six highest-ranked conference champions would get invited to the expanded playoffs, it means the American Athletic Conference champion will get into the playoff more times than not. In the seven years since the advent of the College Football Playoff, the AAC champion would have made a 12-team playoff five times. Two of those champions, of course, would have been UCF’s back-toback undefeated teams in 2017 and 2018 under former coaches Scott Frost and Josh Heupel.
Speaking of which, all of the other Group of 5 members and leagues owe UCF a monumental debt of gratitude. As AAC conference commissioner Mike Aresco told Marc Daniels on his radio show Friday on FM 96.9 The Game, “UCF’s 25-game winning streak and that run in 2017 helped change the dialogue about the playoffs.”
How happy was Aresco when he got the news that a 12-team playoff format seems imminent? When he was contacted by Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com on Thursday night, he was headed out to dinner with his wife. Dodd asked Aresco if he was going to toast the proposed expanded playoff with a glass of champagne? Replied Aresco: “I may drink it straight out of the bottle.”
By the way, I think I owe Aresco an apology for secretly rolling my eyes and snickering every time in the past he would use the term “Power 6” instead of “Power 5” when describing the top conferences in college football. It was Aresco’s way of promoting his league by suggesting the American deserved to be mentioned in the same sentence as the SEC, Big Ten and the other big-boy leagues. Three or four years ago, such a concept seemed laughable. Well, guess what? With a proposed new 12-team playoff, there is a Power 6 and most years the American will be included.
And as long as we’re doling out apologies, all of you out there who scoffed at former UCF athletics director Danny White for declaring the undefeated 2017 UCF football team as “national champions” can now issue your own mea culpa. I said it then and I’ll say it again now: White’s “national championship” declaration was one of the greatest marketing strategies in the history of college football — and it didn’t cost a penny.
Simply by declaring UCF as “national champions” and calling the four-team playoff a “Power 5 Invitational,” White lit the fuse and got everybody in the college football establishment — from Paul Finebaum
to Kirk Herbstreit to Nick Saban — talking about UCF’s worthiness as a playoff participant. White’s aggressive chiding of the exclusive system reignited the dialogue about playoff expansion and is one of the major reasons we are now at the doorstep of a 12-team playoff.
Ironically, White and Heupel are now at Tennessee, which has a more difficult path into the potential new 12-team playoff than does UCF. In fact, you could also say new UCF head coach Gus Malzahn will have an easier path into the playoff at UCF than if he had stayed at Auburn. Why do I say this? Because you figure the SEC — if you take the average over the seven years since the College Football Playoff rankings began — will get three teams into a 12-team playoff. With one of those teams being Saban’s Cyborgs at Alabama, that means the other 13 SEC teams are battling for just two spots.
Be honest, what do you think is easier: Finishing in the top three in the SEC with Alabama and other traditional powers such as Georgia, Florida, LSU, Texas A&M and Auburn or winning the American Athletic Conference over the likes of Cincinnati, Memphis, etc.? If you ask me, it’s a no-brainer: UCF has a better chance of getting into a playoff than 75 percent of the programs in the Power 5.
When I told longtime national college football writer and broadcaster Brett McMurphy on Friday that UCF, under the new format, has a better chance of getting into the playoff out of the American than Mississippi State does out of the SEC, McMurphy replied: “You’re 1,000 percent right. If you take the money part out of it — which I know you can’t — UCF would be crazy now to want to be in the SEC, ACC or Big 12 . ... If you can win an easier conference, you have just as good an opportunity to get into the playoff now.”
Obviously, because of the massive amounts of TV revenue that Power 5 leagues generate, UCF would still love to join the SEC, ACC or Big 12, but as far as national branding and exposure, the Knights will be better off if they can become the Alabama of the Group of 5.
And make no mistake about it. UCF has some built-in advantages other potential Group of 5 powers simply do not. Why do you think Malzahn tweeted out “game changer” with a photo of a UCF jersey with the number 12 on it? Malzahn is Exhibit A when discussing UCF’s built-in advantages. He is a marquee coach with recruiting ties across the Southeast who says he wants UCF to be his final coaching destination.
Exhibit B: UCF is located in Orlando, which is nicknamed the “City Beautiful” for a reason. If Malzahn tells recruits they can now compete for a national championship if they come to UCF, won’t many top prospects choose to play in Orlando rather than cold-weather Group of 5 destinations?
Exhibits C, D and E: UCF is located smack dab in the middle of Florida — one of the nation’s most fertile recruiting hotbeds. UCF has some of the best facilities and the second-largest athletic budget (behind Houston) among all Group of 5 programs. And UCF is in the largest metropolitan area in the country without an NFL team, which means top college football players won’t have nearly the competition in Orlando when trying to sell their name, image and likeness as they would in, say, Houston, Cincinnati or Tampa.
When I asked new UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir if a 12-team playoff puts UCF on an even playing field with the Gators, ’Canes and ’Noles, he replied: “Big-time is a state of mind.”
Maybe so, but there’s no denying that UCF’s big-time state of mind is closer than ever to becoming a big-time state of reality.