UCF’s scheduling plan ignores history, but maybe it’s the right idea?

The Playoff committee should’ve ranked UCF higher in the last two years, but it didn’t. It would be nice if top Power 5 teams wanted to give the Knights chances to prove themselves, but they don’t. Throughout history, it would’ve been great if every unbeaten team had gotten a shot, but heaping piles didn’t.

Following the committee’s poor decision to not pair UCF and Florida in the Peach Bowl, Knights AD Danny White sent an email to Florida’s Scott Stricklin, surely with knowledge that their exchange would be public record. White wanted UCF games against Florida — with a stipulation.

White fairly wanted an even exchange of home games, rather than a deal like the one USF just took: two UF home games for one return game.

“UF isn’t in the market for home-and-home or a neutral site games against non-Autonomy 5 opponents,” Stricklin wrote, also fairly.

“Requiring non-autonomy 5 schools to have to settle for inequitable scheduling seems like an unfair business practice and something we should all address at a high level,” White responded.

It’s true that we are now in the era of a Playoff that only gives half of FBS teams a realistic path. So White’s political theater is justified.

But unless there’s a secondary motive here (scroll down), to expect blue bloods to suddenly treat certain mid-majors as equals would be to ignore how those in power act until usurpers spend years and years — as in, more than two or three — hammering down walls.

Before 1913, the Irish beat up Kirksville Osteopath, the Illinois Cycling Club, Chicago Dental Infirmary, and various high schools. This was normal for the era.

But as Notre Dame tells it:

The first item on [new head coach and AD Jesse Harper’s] docket was upgrading the football schedule -- provided it came with sound business practice to complement it.

Because it was getting blackballed by the other Midwest powers, the Notre Dame football schedules become extremely unattractive and, hence, unprofitable.

One of Harper’s first moves was to write to the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY., for a game. Army originally offered Notre Dame $600 for travel expenses, but Harper was able to haggle for $1,000.

With penny-pinching practices such as taking 14 cleats for the 18-man Notre Dame team on the railroad trip, plus packing their own meals from the student-dining hall, the trip ended up costing $917 -- an $83 profit.

It might be peanuts in 2013, or at least the cost of a Notre Dame home game ticket, but it was striking gold in 1913.

In a span of 27 days in November, Notre Dame pulled watershed road upsets against Army (35-13), Penn State (14-7), Christian Brothers in St. Louis (20-7) and Texas in Austin (on Thanksgiving Day) for a remarkable 7-0-debut campaign. As a coach, Harper proved to be an innovator with a passing attack at Army that awed the eastern media and aided Notre Dame’s place on the football map.

The primary coup: swooping in to replace Yale on Army’s schedule, long among the toughest in football. The Irish won after a 24-hour railroad trip.

Notre Dame-Army was played at West Point until 1923, when it finally moved ... about 50 miles from Army’s campus. The Cadets wouldn’t travel to South Bend until the 34th meeting.

By that time the Irish had claimed five titles and — full circle — become the team the up-and-comers dreamed of scheduling.

That’s a cliche about how Bobby Bowden built a young program into a national champ. But there’s plenty of truth to it.

If you look only at games played between 1980 — the year after the Noles established themselves as truly legit by going 11-1 — and 1988 — when they began as preseason No. 1 — you see a team willing to constantly hit the road in order to beat big names. In that span, the Noles:

Before this, you also had series like FSU’s with Auburn, with seven Seminole trips in eight meetings. The Noles took three trips to Alabama to play the Tide, with no return yet. Only two of FSU’s first 16 games against Miami were in Tallahassee. Its first six against Florida were in Gainesville.

The Noles wouldn’t welcome Georgia Tech until their ninth meeting, when they were both in the ACC, by which point nobody wanted to play the Noles anywhere.

The debate about non-powers has revolved around UCF for a couple years now, but the BCS era often had multiple snubbed non-powers at once, with road warrior Boise State often in that group.

Going forward, they’ll host Oregon again, part of a two-for-one deal like the one UCF’s turned down. They’ve landed a home-and-home with Michigan State after a trip to East Lansing in 2012.

But they’ll also get a straight up return visit from Oklahoma State. And Boise State will host Florida State in 2020 after going to Jacksonville, a big risk for the Anybody Anywhere team of the ‘80s against the Anybody Anywhere team of the ‘00s.

So 17 years after the Broncos’ first of many one-loss seasons, they’re finally thought of as an established peer by some top powers (for comparison, UCF’s first one-loss season was only six years ago — with a winless season since then).

I think the Knights should do what their predecessors have done: take Florida’s deal. It’s true UCF already gets home-and-homes from middling ACC teams and other teams that just want to recruit the Sunshine State, but this would be a step up in profile and three chances to beat very talented SEC teams.

But maybe White is right.

“If this type of scheduling is what is required for teams like UCF to make the final 4 of the CFP, we must consider expansion of the playoff to include non-autonomy 5 schools,” he also wrote to Stricklin.

Maybe insisting on a narrative, a “Power 6” brand, and intentionally public appeals to the kindness of elites will continue to contribute to the debate on expanding the Playoff. If that eventually includes an automatic Group of 5 bid, UCF can then play whoever it wants, wherever it wants.

Why didn’t 1913 Kirksville Osteopath just think of that?