Ex-UCF coach Scott Frost: Not all of Alabama's titles are legit
Scott Frost, who coached the University of Central Florida football team to an undefeated season last year, may have moved on to his alma mater, Nebraska, but he’s still defending the Knights.
UCF has been in a battle with Alabama over which school is the rightful 2018 national champion.
The Crimson Tide won the official title when they beat Georgia 26-23 in the College Football Playoff championship game in January.
But the Knights said they deserved to be in the playoff after a 12-0 regular season, and as soon as they won the Peach Bowl against Auburn — a team that had beaten Alabama — they declared themselves the true national champs.
UCF Athletic Director Danny White announced that the university would hang up a national championship banner at its stadium and hold a parade at Disney World to celebrate the 13-0 season.
The team also received championship rings.
UCF also gave their players national championship rings 😂 pic.twitter.com/XabZeuuX2m
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 22, 2018
This week, Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban finally broke his silence about the Knights’ title claims.
“If you honor and respect the system that we have, [despite] some of the imperfections that you understand that the system has, then you wouldn’t do something out of respect for the system that we have,” Saban told USA Today.
“I guess anybody has the prerogative to claim anything,” he added. “But self-proclaimed is not the same as actually earning it. And there’s probably a significant number of people who don’t respect people who make self-proclaimed sort of accolades for themselves.”
Now Frost has fired back.
“Alabama probably has one or two national championships they claim that weren’t necessarily recognized by everybody,” he said Thursday in an interview with KETV-TV in Omaha.
Frost didn’t specify which of the Crimson Tide’s titles wasn’t legit, but it’s likely he was referring to the ones that happened before the NCAA instituted playoffs.
Prior to the early 1990s, the college football champion was determined by polls, and oftentimes the Associated Press poll — voted on by sportswriters — named a different champ than the coaches’ poll, long associated with UPI.
Before 1974, the coaches’ poll was taken before the bowl games. That changed after Alabama was crowned in the poll following the 1973 season and then lost to Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. The Fighting Irish were voted No. 1 in the final AP poll.
Alabama also shared the title in 1978. The Crimson Tide again won the writers’ poll, while USC — which had beaten Alabama 24-14 in Birmingham during the regular season — won the coaches’ poll.
It’s a shame last year’s Tide team can’t play last year’s Knights to settle the dispute on the field. The best we can hope for is a Frost-Saban battle in the next College Football Playoff.
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