Shortly after UCF’s Peach Bowl win against Auburn on New Year’s Day, Knights athletic director Danny White claimed a national championship for his 13-0 team.
UCF’s AD declares the Knights national champs after 13-0 Peach Bowl season
Let’s all shoot our shots in 2018.
“National champs. Undefeated,” White said as he stared into a camera.
White has previously called out the Playoff selection committee for not respecting the Knights’ conference, the AAC.
The Knights finished the year as the only unbeaten team in the FBS. They were nowhere near the College Football Playoff, as their 12-0 record through the AAC Championship Game only netted them the No. 12 spot in the final committee ranking before bowl season.
The Knights will not get a co-championship nod. It’s unlikely anyone ever will again, now that the sport has a Playoff and can get closer than ever to an undisputed champion in any given year. There hasn’t been any kind of split title since 2003, when LSU won the BCS but AP Poll voters put USC on top to end the year.
White’s title claim does bring up a point, though.
The sport’s powers that be should start thinking about how to give teams like UCF a title shot, though, given how thoroughly the Knights proved themselves.
In the Playoff era, three of the four Group of 5 representatives in New Year’s Six bowl games have won. The Knights were the most impressive of any of them, but their AAC schedule, with only Maryland joining as a Power 5 team from non-conference, wasn’t enough to give them a chance. So, what could be done about this? Some ideas:
Mid-majors who don’t play and beat national powers shouldn’t make a four-team Playoff, sure. But what can be done to ensure that a team like UCF — which was perfect, and which proved too late that it could beat just about anyone — has at least some path to the top?
The sport would be more fun if Cinderellas had at least some chance at a title, and they currently don’t unless they have a blue-blood win. Because Houston’s season fell apart after beating Oklahoma in Week 1 in 2016, we don’t even know if that’s enough.
If the Playoff ever expands to eight or more teams, it might make sense to set aside a spot for the best Group of 5 team — especially if there are spots reserved for the winners of any power leagues. That’s one idea. Another is for Group of 5 conferences to mandate their teams schedule harder, by installing some kind of heightened criteria they need to meet. But that’s hard, because you can’t force Power 5 schools to schedule anyone in particular.
I don’t know what the fix is that would let a team like UCF have a chance in the future. But one exists somewhere, and it’s a shame the Knights didn’t have a shot in 2017. The season would’ve been more fun if they had championship potential as a Cinderella.
For now, none of that exists. That shouldn’t diminish what UCF pulled off this year.
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