D'Angelo: UCF more than ready to make move to Big 12 and Power 5 football
Tom D'AngeloFlorida State is reeling from the worst loss in program history. Miami needed a late field goal to defeat a Sun Belt team after a disheartening showing against Alabama. Florida is more than a two-touchdown home dog to the Crimson Tide this week.
Meanwhile, UCF has had the best start to the football season in the state with the best win on the field and a historic step forward off the field.
Now, the Knights can give their fans a taste of things to come. They travel to Louisville for a Friday night game, their first against a Power 5 opponent since it became official that one day they will be one of those P5 schools.
UCF is joining the Big 12, which puts the Orlando school where it belongs, in one of the top five conferences in the country.
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The move to the P5 is a major step in this program's quest to stop living in the shadow of Miami, Florida State and Florida. This state has the Big Three and it will be difficult to change that mindset. But UCF has done all it can in the last four years to alter that perception with a run better than any of the state's more high-profile programs.
During that span, UCF has won 41 games — eight more than Florida, 10 more than Miami and 20 more than FSU. The Knights have finished ranked three times. Only Florida can say that among state schools.
UCF coach Guz Malzahn reacted to the news with a social media post that read:
"Big BOOM!! It’s a great time to be a KNIGHT!!" At his news conference this week, he called this "a game changer" for his program.
"Before it even came out officially, recruits were contacting us," he said. "We ran into the battle of, 'Hey coach, we love everything about you. But you're not Power 5.'
"We fought that the past four or five months. That's no longer the case. That will be a game changer."
As the first team under 'others receiving votes' in the Associate Press poll, UCF is ready to crack the Top 25 once again. A victory at Louisville — UCF is an eight-point favorite — would do it. The season should come down to its showdown in about a month at No. 7 Cincinnati, a game that likely will determine the Group of 5's representative in a New Year's Six bowl.
Still, even with five victories (in seven games) over P5 schools in the last four years, games in which they have outscored those supposedly superior programs by a whopping 22 points, the Knights still must prove to some people they belong among the big boys.
UCF will be joined by Cincinnati, Houston and BYU in the Big 12. The four schools likely saved the conference from extinction with Oklahoma and Texas leaving for the SEC. Those departures left the Big 12 with just eight schools.
UCF will settle into a conference that distributed more than $34 million to each school this year. Although that number will drop with Oklahoma and Texas taking their brands to the SEC, it still will be a significant increase from the AAC's handing out about $7 million per school.
And even though that number probably will be the lowest among the P5 conferences, it is a major windfall for UCF.
UCF, Houston and Cincinnati are required to give a 27-month notice to the AAC and pay a $10 million exit penalty. Anything could be negotiated to leave earlier. BYU, an independent in football, will join starting in 2023-24.
UCF's appeal is testimony to the aggressive style of new AD Terry Mohajir, whose first move after taking over in February was to bring in Malzahn, the best coach available on the market.
Mohajir made it clear he would push for his program to leave behind the stigma of being a Group of 5 school and move into first class. While football has done its part on the field the last four years, Mohajir is making sure UCF is competitive in the arms race. He recently presented UCF’s Board of Trustees with a $50 million plan to create a "football campus" that will include upgrades to every facet of the program, including the stadium, weight room and meeting rooms.
Of course, the Big 12 was desperate after being reduced to an eight-team conference. The conference would have disappeared if its remaining members started bailing and looking for homes in the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12. If any other teams were poached, that would have been the end of the Big 12.
Instead, commissioner Bob Bowlsby was proactive and saved his league from extinction.
“This was a very clear and relatively easy decision for the eight continuing members of the Big 12,” Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec said after the four schools' applications were unanimously approved.
UCF has been among the most polarizing programs in the country since former AD Danny White and the entire fan base decided to go all-in on declaring themselves National Champions in 2017. The move was strategic and ingenious.
Joining a conference with Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Iowa State, West Virginia, TCU, Baylor, Kansas State and Kansas puts UCF in the top third when it comes to national brand.
Meanwhile, AAC commissioner Mike Aresco is doing all he can to soften the blow to his conference by downplaying the losses and trying to convince everyone this furthers his agenda to make the AAC a power conference. Granted, the league has had its moments and at times in the last four years it could have been argued it was a better football conference than the Pac-12 or the ACC. But that was at its absolute peak.
The AAC never was a power conference and now it has been severely weakened. The best Aresco can do is to raid the Sun Belt, maybe go after schools like Boise State and San Diego State as it unsuccessfully tried in 2012 or try to convince Army to join Navy in the AAC.
But that's now the AAC's problem. UCF is set to take a significant and important step out of that conference.
Can anyone say: Big Four?