UCF didn’t make the Playoff, yet went undefeated and beat Auburn in the Peach Bowl, giving it a transitive win over national champ Alabama. UCF declared itself national champ after beating Auburn, which is a totally college football thing to do and well within the bounds of college football history.
One reason UCF’s national title claim is actually valid (and it’s not the reason you think)
Officially, Alabama’s your consensus champ, but UCF has as much of a claim as several Power 5 teams who claim titles.
Photo by Michael Wade/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Those who wish to recognize the Knights as the season’s only actual champion (usually because they just don’t like Bama/the SEC/ESPN, but often because they’re UCF fans, unhappy with the Playoff, or just want to watch the world burn) usually turn to undefeated and transitive wins and it’s time to sue the Playoff, storm ESPN’s offices, and kidnap Big Al the elephant mascot.
But there’s something much simpler, for those so inclined.
Turn to page 108 of the NCAA’s football records. There you’ll see a list of “national champion major selectors.” These are national polls, computers, historians, and other rankings that the NCAA recognizes as contributing to the selection of national champs throughout the sport’s history.
That page is followed by a list of selector No. 1s for every season in football history. The records stop listing out each season’s computer No. 1s midway through the BCS era, though several are still listed as actively recognized selectors. Since 1950, the NCAA’s also given the major polls the power to award “consensus” titles, giving them prominence over the computers.
The NCAA doesn’t award an official FBS champ, so this is as close as it comes to sorting out claims.
(I used those selectors and other metrics to come up with a list of the actual consensus national champ for every season.)
UCF has a No. 1 in one of these.
The Colley Matrix, formerly a BCS computer, has UCF barely ahead of Alabama in its final ranking.
So what, right? Some computer you forgot existed went rogue. Here’s the thing:
Plenty of programs claim national titles based on being No. 1 in a single selector.
Alabama’s ludicrous 1941 claim is literally based on one man’s opinion. Ohio State calls itself 1970’s champion despite the only selector to have the Buckeyes No. 1, the National Football Foundation, also having Texas No. 1. Texas A&M claims 1927 based on nothing but a computer that came around decades later. Kentucky claims 1950 based solely on the same formula. USC’s 1939 claim is at least based on a mathematical formula that was around at the time, though it was still only one selector. And so on and so on.
If it’s good for the Power 5, it’s good for the Group of 5.
Claim it with historical authority, UCF.
Here’s how 2017 went down, as visualized by Wikipedia’s nicely done table listing every season, with bold signifying consensus:
Alabama is your consensus national champion, according to NCAA terminology (and the results of the Playoff), but UCF has just as much official reason to claim a national title as, say, 1941’s Alabama team had.
Congrats to all our many champs.
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