SmashMouth

UCF athletic director Danny White said Wednesday that the program has decided to claim a national championship and will place a championship banner inside Spectrum Stadium to recognize its undefeated 2017 season.

The Knights beat Auburn 34-27 in the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl to cap a 13-0 season, finishing as the only undefeated team in college football. But because UCF doesn't play in a Power 5 conference, it entered the bowl game ranked No. 12 by the College Football Playoff selection committee and was not given an opportunity to play for the national championship.

Nonetheless, the school said that it will hold a celebratory parade for the team at Disney World on Sunday.

Since the victory on New Year's Day, UCF football has changed its Twitter display name to "2017 National Champions" with a logo designed to match.

White initially told Orlando radio station 96.9 The Game about plans for the banner.

burningmetal

This has become such an obligatory reaction these days. Some team, who plays almost nobody of note all year, wins all of their games and decides they deserve to be considered for the playoffs or to be in the top two in the old BCS days.

You beat Auburn... Whoopity doo. LSU beat Auburn, and also lost to Troy. Let's give Troy a share of the national championship, too. Why not? We used to hear this year after year from Boise State.

You don't get to play cream puffs all year, and then suddenly show up and squeak by a 3 loss team and act like you just ran the gauntlet. When you play in a real conference, you play these kinds of teams nearly every week. That presents a challenge not only in competition, but also in how it wears you down to play in physical battles all year long. When you are UCF, and you're beating down some crappy team, you get to rest players in games.

You can't let just anybody into the playoffs because they "think" they deserve it. There are 120 division 1 teams, or however many now, and you cannot make everyone happy with a playoff. This is not basketball or baseball. It's why I never wanted to see ANY kind of playoff. People just have to accept that there have to be committees, because you can't just use best records to let people in. There would be a lot of small schools getting into the playoffs, having beaten no one, and you'd have way too many teams, in general.

If you want to be considered for the playoffs, go play somebody good. And I don't mean the last game of the year. Do it 5 or 6 times. UCF are embarrassing themselves with this stunt.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, the NFL would fine and suspend me.

burningmetal

Also, teams stopped claiming national championships a long time ago. And when they WERE doing that, it was a sad and pathetic chapter in the history of college football. That's why they came up with the BCS. It was supposed to be unbiased, and it was. It wasn't perfect, but in my opinion it was the best we were ever going to get. But people whined for playoffs year after year, and they finally got it. And just as I always predicted, they still aren't happy.

People just want what they want. But you don't win championships by wanting to. Should have stuck with the BCS. Now people get to complain about committees, and no matter how many teams they add to the playoff format, the next team out will complain.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, the NFL would fine and suspend me.

SmashMouth

A 16 team playoffs will not slight anyone. If division II can do it, so can the big boys.

burningmetal

That's just it. The next 3-5 teams out in a 16 team playoff WOULD feel slighted, because somebody always does. It's not like the NFL where you have just 32 teams, and it's strictly based on records and head to head, or conference record tie breakers. No one can argue at the end.

In college, you can't go by strict rules like that, because there are such wildly varying degrees of competition that all of the teams play. That's how you end up with UCF and their pathetic schedule, thinking that they deserve to be in because they went undefeated.

Tulane went 13-0 back in '98, I believe, and I didn't hear a peep out of anyone that they deserved a share of the national championship. It was understood back then that not all records were created equal, and Tulane hadn't played nearly a hard enough schedule to warrant consideration. But since Boise State beat Oklahoma years ago in the Fiesta bowl, or whatever it was, people have lost their minds every time some little team has a historical (by their standards) season, and think they should get to play for all the marbles. And it's just not reality.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, the NFL would fine and suspend me.

SmashMouth