Nick Saban has enough, finally fires back at 'self-proclaimed' champs UCF
When Alabama beat Georgia 26-23 in overtime to win the College Football Playoff championship game in January, they became the official 2018 national champs.
The four-team College Football Playoff was set up to end any controversy over which team is the national champion. Previously, the Bowl Championship Series and its predecessors matched only the top two teams in a title game. Up until the early 1990s, the champion was usually determined by polls.
So the Crimson Tide’s championship was undisputed, right?
Not according to the University of Central Florida.
The Knights finished the regular season a perfect 12-0, but they were denied a berth in the College Football Playoff. Instead, the selection committee chose a one-loss Alabama team as the No. 4 seed, along with No. 1 Clemson, No. 2 Oklahoma and No. 3 Georgia.
The committee put UCF at No. 12.
The Knights still went to Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the site of the playoffs, but it was a week earlier to play in the Peach Bowl. They won that game 34-27, beating an Auburn team that had defeated the Crimson Tide 26-14.
It didn’t take long for UCF Athletic Director Danny White to declare the Knights “national champs.”
.@UCFDannyWhite didn’t stutter…#ChargeOn pic.twitter.com/ozdNaz4MCW
— UCF Knights (@UCFKnights) January 1, 2018
Two days later, White announced that UCF would hang up a national championship banner at its stadium and hold a parade at Disney World.
The team also received championship rings.
UCF also gave their players national championship rings 😂 pic.twitter.com/XabZeuuX2m
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 22, 2018
On Tuesday, Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban finally addressed UCF’s championship 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.”
The coach of the undefeated Knights team apparently agrees with him.
Scott Frost, who left UCF after the season to take the head coaching job at his alma mater, Nebraska, was asked about the UCF championship celebrations earlier this month.
“All I’ll say is if we had stayed there, I would have had a hard time getting behind it,” he told USA Today. “I think it was smart by them, because it has kept UCF in the media and in the conversation. But you know, like our rings, I kind of wish my ring just said ‘Undefeated Season’ and ‘Peach Bowl Champion.'”
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