I usually don’t wade into SDMB college football threads, but since I’m a fan of the Undefeated National Champion UCF Knights I guess I have to.
UCF is the largest university in the country, and it wasn’t that long ago that we won the Fiesta Bowl against the #1 offense in the history of college football. And yet, the UCF football program is practically invisible unless you read Deadspin regularly.
The UCF football Facebook page is currently getting blown up by SEC fans who are personally offended that UCF have semi-jokingly declared themselves national champions. Meanwhile, athletic director Danny White has been interviewed on every major national sports media outlet in the last two days, and will be on Outside the Lines tonight.
Having been on the other end of the endlessly hilarious Civil Conflict “rivalry”, this had the potential to be hugely embarrassing. Instead, it’s a massive publicity, fundraising and recruiting coup; Danny is now the long-term face of the overlooked G5 teams.
Regarding the Peach Bowl itself, everyone said UCF didn’t deserve to make the top 10 because the defense was bad (because at best, they’d seen the highlights of the USF and second Memphis games). I explained that the team had played 11 straight weeks because of Hurricane Irma, and the defense would be excellent against Auburn after a three-week break, but nobody believed me. So fuck all of you! McKenzie Milton played by far his worst half of the season, and yet we were still up at halftime. If he’d played normally in the first half, that game would have been a 20-point blowout.
Kudos to UCF. I’m not sure if their claim to #1 is all that watertight; but raising the stature of the G5 is a good thing; and pissing off the SEC is a bonus.
The claim is that they beat the team that beat *both *teams in the NCAA’s tournament finals, and went undefeated when nobody else did. Yes, it’s posturing, but with a purpose.
The magnitude of the outrage from SEC fans only shows they have a good point.
I get the UCF pride and all that, just like I got Boise State pride when Chris Petersen was the coach. No doubt, UCF was a good team this year, but beating Auburn in the Peach Bowl isn’t the same as beating them during the regular season when there’s more on the line. And truth to tell, probably any top 20 team is capable of beating most of the rest of the top 20 on any given week. UCF could just try to join a regular conference like the ACC or SEC. Until they do, beating Memphis and USF are always going to be regarded as suspect wins. But congrats on their undefeated season nevertheless.
Cute, but the SEC is going to win the national championship this year, and it’s going to set the record straight once and for all. The SEC has for years kept hearing about how it’s 7-season title streak was undeserved, and the SEC heard about how expanding to a playoff would ensure that the other conferences would now have a chance to show the country that the SEC was overrated. They had their chance - two of them on the same day actually - and they got fucking stuffed. Once again, it’s an all-SEC championship game. And if you expand the field to 8 teams or even 16, you’re still going to have all-SEC title games because from East Texas to the Atlantic coast of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina produces so much football talent it’ll make your head spin.
As a charter member of the SEC Basher’s Club I feel compelled to clarify and correct a few misconceptions.
First, I don’t think anyone is charging that any of the SEC’s run of 7 straight titles was somehow undeserved. All those champions were perfectly well qualified.
And expanding the playoffs would have given the SEC at least one more opportunity: Auburn, undefeated in 2004, shut out of the BCS.
Nobody wants to expand the playoffs as a way of punishing the SEC, but just as a way of mitigating the whining from those guys on the bubble (who may or may not be SEC members).
No, the SEC-bashing is based just on two things: (1) boredom with being dominated by the usual suspects every year. And (2) the whole concept of rooting for a conference, not a team. You know… “SEC! SEC! SEC!”. And inane comments like “SEC speed”. And how fans of bottom-dwelling loser programs somehow share credit for the success of Alabama and Florida (in the past).
Oh, yes, because joining a “regular conference” is as simple as saying, “hey, we want to join.” That’s nearly amusing as your contention that Auburn had “more on the line” in the regular season than they did in a New Year’s Six bowl game. Are you new to college football or something?
Yeah…the SEC (as I understand it) was the first to put a priority on speed at traditionally non-speedy positions, like DE. But the rest of the country has caught up.
Sad news from Washington state:
NBC Sports - CollegeFootballTalk: Washington State QB Tyler Hilinski found dead in apparent suicidehttp://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/01/17/washington-state-qb-tyler-hilinski-found-dead-in-apparent-suicide/
I hate hoping it was just depression and nothing more was involved.
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They could always schedule a game against a real opponent during the regular season. Occasionally, Boise State would - like the time when they played Oregon and Lagerette Blount ended up punching a Boise State player in the face and got suspended by Chip Kelly. UCF went from winless to undefeated in 2 years. They weren’t going to put Alabama or any real team on the menu. Nothing takes away from their amazing season but they’re not in the title conversation.
The rest of the country has caught up but not in terms of player depth. They’ve caught up in terms of putting good starting talent on the field and coaching. Back when the SEC was winning year in and year out, I always said (even against the whining of other SEC fans) that when the coaches start looking to move away from the SEC, there would be down years, because it doesn’t matter how much talent a team has: if the coaching is superior, a team with 3 and 4-star recruits can beat a team of 5 star recruits and mediocre coaching.
I like to quote Barry Alavarez on the question of speed. “No one recruits slugs”.
Wisconsin’s offensive line that season consisted of four redshirt freshmen. 1997 was Dayne’s least productive season of college football because of that. The QB, Mike Samuel was less than stellar. He could run a bit, but throwing was poor. That team was actually outscored on the season, even though it had a winning record. It certainly was accurate to say Georgia was much faster than Wisconsin that season, but that’s not indicative of how good the SEC was compared to the Big Ten overall. More like how lacking that Wisconsin team was.
CouchScout.com has speed numbers for most college players. Not entirely accurate, but a good indication. Compare Miami and Wisconsin this past season. Fairly close numbers. And in the Organge Bowl, after the half, Miami began covering the Wisconsin wide receivers using zones because man coverage wasn’t working. That was a function of both fast recievers for Wisconsin and a very decent Wisconsin quarterback.
If I had to peg an advantage the SEC has, it would be on the defensive line. In the Big Ten, only Ohio State has been able to recruit a defensive line up to the standards of the best SEC teams.
They had Maryland and Georgia Tech on the schedule (the latter game was cancelled due to Hurricane Irma). They also played 10 straight weeks without a bye (also because of the hurricane), which ups the difficulty factor exponentially.
I’m now sure you don’t understand how college football works. Out-of-conference games aren’t scheduled based on last season’s record. They are scheduled years in advance. The Georgia Tech game was scheduled in April 2015 (along with one in 2016 and one in 2020) - before the winless season. In August 2016, UCF signed a home-and-home series agreement with UNC for 2018 and 2020.
In 2015 UCF had out-of-conference games against Stanford and South Carolina. In 2016, Michigan and Maryland. In 2014, Penn State, Missouri and BYU. In 2013, it was Penn State and South Carolina. None of this has anything to do with the previous year’s record.
Alabama, like everyone else, also schedules its out of conference games years in advance. This year’s FSU game was signed in July 2015.
UCF might not be in your title conversation, but they beat the best or second-best team in the SEC convincingly on a neutral field. They clearly should be in the conversation. To argue otherwise is just SEC homer nonsense.
It’s great that UCF is in a title conversation, but they’re not the champions. UCF can hang fly their own national championship banner if they want, but visitors will probably just laugh at it.
McKenzie Milton played by far his worst half of the season, and yet we were still up at halftime. If he’d played normally in the first half, that game would have been a 20-point blowout.