SEC Commissioner Tells UCF To Stop Whining, Look 'Inward'
The Golden Knights of Central Florida were not seriously considered at any point for the College Football Playoff.
This is despite the fact that UCF is on a 25-game winning streak with the Fiesta Bowl against LSU still to come on New Year’s Day.
If the Knights win, it will be their second straight perfect 13-0 season, their second straight “snub” from the CFP and their second self-proclaimed national championship recognized by them alone.
Most college football fans recognize that football is not basketball and that a mid-major school is very unlikely to get a serious chance to compete for a title.
But one football person whose hackles have been raised by UCF’s griping is the commissioner of the conference that is home to both of the finalists in last year’s national championship game — Alabama and Georgia — and that not only is supplying UCF’s bowl opponent but also seeks to get another national title with the Crimson Tide in the playoff.
Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey laid a verbal smackdown on the champions of the American Athletic Conference during a radio interview at the Learfield Intercollegiate Athletics Forum on Thursday, The Associated Press reported.
Sankey said UCF needs to “look inward” and understand that if you don’t beat anyone, you don’t get to call yourself champion.
In boxing terms, it’s a guy who comes through the ranks as a club fighter, beats up a bunch of strip club bouncers and forklift drivers, then points at his undefeated record and claims he’s the heavyweight champion of the world when the only way he’s getting into a fight involving Tyson Fury is to buy a ticket.
Sankey’s argument, however, tends to fall apart when you consider that he rested most of it on the shoulders of college basketball, a sport where 68 teams make the playoffs rather than four, and he pointed to his own conference’s woeful 2016 — only three SEC teams made the field that year — to explain his reasoning.
“We weren’t living up to our expectations. Rather than point to the selection committee, other people … we looked inward and said: ‘How do we adjust to the circumstances around us?'” Sankey said. “I would observe that’s the challenge for everybody at the FBS level.”
Sankey made the directive from on high to command his schools to play tougher nonconference basketball schedules.
“When it was us and when it was men’s basketball, we knew we had two top-50 teams in 2015-16, which means you had virtually no top-50 wins in men’s basketball,” Sankey said. “How are you going to access those wins? You have to improve your nonconference schedule.”
UCF athletic director Danny White took umbrage, and a simple text message, sent to AP, was all that was required for White to dismantle Sankey’s argument.
“Basketball teams are rewarded for playing tough teams such as UCF through metrics like RPI or NET, while football teams avoid us because they’re concerned about the ‘eye test,'” White said.
Or, put another way, there are three nonconference games in a football regular season and an entire college football season’s worth of nonconference basketball games.
What’s more, as White points out, losing to a mid-major in basketball can actually help a team on the bubble come March; because of the heavy use of analytics and metrics and what-have-you, a “good loss” is worth more than a “bad win,” while a “bad loss” — heaven forbid you lose to Pile of Electronics State — could send you to the Not Invited Tournament in basketball.
In football, losing to a mid-major is “your season is over, thanks for playing, come back next year, enjoy your bowl game before Christmas.”
Consider that the only team in the College Football Playoff with a loss — No. 4 Oklahoma — lost a shootout 48-45 against a ranked Texas team in the schools’ “Red River Shootout” rivalry game, and then Oklahoma avenged that loss in the Big XII championship game on a neutral site.
Had Oklahoma lost to Florida Atlantic (a team they beat 63-14 to open their season, and a team that plays in the mid-major Conference USA), it wouldn’t have mattered if the Sooners won out. Their season would’ve been over.
That’s why teams won’t play UCF. If you’re going to schedule a mid-major, schedule the one you can thrash by almost 50, not the one that’s going to give you a game and risk killing your whole season.
Plus, playing in the AAC has other downsides, too.
For example, Jeff Sagarin’s computer rankings had UCF’s strength of schedule 99th in FBS.
And if computers aren’t your thing, the simple fact remains that the Knights faced exactly zero opponents ranked in the final Top 25.
Oklahoma, meanwhile, played the same ranked team twice (Texas) and beat 13th-ranked West Virginia on the road 59-56 in the penultimate game of the season.
That made them the choice for the last CFP slot alongside undefeated Alabama, Clemson and Notre Dame.
Sankey, meanwhile, summed up simply the institutionalized power disadvantage that makes FBS football basically “the Power 5 conferences” and “a bunch of teams technically FBS that will never win a title as long as the current system is in place.”
“I don’t think there are simple solutions necessarily,” Sankey said. “There are solutions. One’s going to have to evaluate their circumstances fully to make those decisions. My observation is there is a need to look inward.”
And for those thinking, “Great, just expand the College Football Playoff,” well, in the words of Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.”
The last time a non-Power 5 conference team won the national title in basketball, it was in 1990, when UNLV, led by Jerry Tarkanian and enough recruiting violations to fill about a dozen “30 for 30” documentaries, won it all.
Teams have come close — Butler made the national title game in 2010 and 2011, and Gonzaga got into the last game in 2017 — heck, Butler came within two points of beating Duke with Gordon Hayward at forward and Brad Stevens coaching, a preview of sorts of Hayward’s current tenure with the Boston Celtics.
But if UCF wants to be taken seriously and contend for a title, it’s going to need to maneuver its way into a power conference — the ACC and SEC are logical geographic landing points for them.
It seems highly unlikely the Knights could compete against teams like Alabama and Clemson, but then again, UCF beat an SEC school — No. 7 Auburn — in their bowl game last year.
LSU had better be ready to play come Jan. 1. The Knights have something to prove, and Sankey just added more fuel to their fire.
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