Not me. Any team (OK, almost any) can win a game on a given day, especially with a month to prepare. Auburn lost 4 games too, so it's really not the same as when Utah beat Bama, for example.
And now it's Frost to Nebraska. Hopefully he can revive that program too.
Yes, of course almost any team can beat another one on any given day, but this was no fluke if you break down the numbers as Auburn did NOT dominate with size at the line nor did they dominate with SEC speed. Every prediction on this game looked like this: The Tigers have beaten two of the four members of 2017’s College Football Playoff. That’s just too much for the best UCF team in program history to compete with. Well, that was NOT true and now we will never know how far they could have gone.
UCF, champions of the American Athletic Conference, did go 12-0, but the list of teams it beat (an exclamation point emphasized by all those who say UCF doesn't belong in the playoff), and the scores, didn’t seem like something a team like Auburn, which beat undefeated Georgia and Alabama during the regular season, should worry too much about. While Auburn was competing against playoff teams such as Clemson, the Bulldogs and the Tide, the Knights were throttling Memphis 62-55 in a Tecmo Bowl-like game, USF 49-42, Austin Peay 73-33, East Carolina 63-21, Cincinnati 51-23 and FIU 61-17.
Video-game football wouldn’t work against a powerhouse from the SEC, would it? No way said the experts! UCF’s players said in the days before the game that they had to tackle well and make sure that all gaps were covered to keep Johnson from cutting back and taking advantage of open spaces. UCF played with discipline. Johnson had the team’s longest run (14) and the Tigers finished with just 90 yards rushing on 44 carries. UCF’s offense totaled 411 yards against a SEC defense after averaging 540.4 during the season, but that was enough when Auburn should have been able to dominate the LOS on offense and defense. Quarterback McKenzie Milton, named the offensive MVP, was sacked only once and did enough with his arm (242 passing yards) and legs (116 rushing yards) to send coach Scott Frost to his new job at Nebraska with a school record for victories in a season and the gratification of rebuilding a program that finished 0-12 three years ago. I don't buy the argument that these schools from smaller conferences cannot compete with Power 5 conference teams because not only did the Knights hold up against the Tigers, they displayed more team speed than Auburn. While Auburn running back Kerryon Johnson had 71 rushing yards and a touchdown, he never had that big play and was limited to 3.2 yards per carry. If there are 129 FBS teams, then all 129 deserve the right to play for a national championship if they go undefeated. UCF was the last team standing and earned the right to be in the College Football Playoff. Auburn, which beat No. 3 Georgia and No. 4 Alabama when both teams were ranked No. 1 during the regular season, made it tough for the Knights, but UCF was the better team from start to finish. The margin could have been wider had UCF kicker Matthew Wright not missed a pair of field goals. Milton also overshot a wide-open receiver in the first half for what would have been a sure touchdown. This makes a mockery of the CFP system right now as the original proposal for a playoff was "8" teams and not "4" as was decided by the college football elites who desire to keep the gold for themselves. Don't forget that this wasn't just an upset by a team who may have wanted it more because UCF who was ranked 12th in the final College Football Playoff poll despite being unbeaten, were 10-point underdogs to the Tigers from the SEC and No. 7 Auburn was a national championship contender before its 28-7 loss to No. 3 Georgia in the SEC championship game. These schools like UCF are recruiting players in the state of Florida that can play at Power 5 schools.
What I see happening if the CFP does not expand is teams like this will move to a Power 5 conference in order to compete at the big dance and that will devastate the smaller conferences. In fact, it has already happened! Due to most of the conference's football-playing members leaving the WAC for other affiliations, the conference discontinued football as a sponsored sport after the 2012–13 season. The WAC's demise didn't occur in one fell swoop. Rather, its fall from grace began in 1999, when the WAC was a swollen 16-team conference. That year, eight teams split off to start the Mountain West Conference. Conference realignment and expansion remodeled the NCAA landscape forever. If your team is in a Power 5 conference--that's great--but the super conferences growing bigger means that the smaller conferences cannot compete. "Individual institutions chase more prestigious conferences, and there's a hierarchy that's always existed. WAC teams always wanted to elevate to the Mountain West because there's a perception that it's more prestigious. The club that they're currently in doesn't have the social status that perhaps another club has. As a result, they want to be part of this other club. ... That's just as important as money." "It's virtually impossible to generate any sponsorship dollars and any long-term television opportunities when you have a constant change in membership, and that goes back 15 years. "When you try to negotiate a better or new deal, the issue [with television providers] always is, 'What are we buying? What's the commitment on the part of the conference?'" Restructuring a media deal for the WAC was impossible because there was no idea what the conference membership would be. The WAC was able to live with its revolving door ethos for more than a decade, but universities are not a renewable resource, and the conference in the Intermountain West already had a shortage of programs from which to choose. After the Mountain West was established, the WAC had to expand its footprint from
Louisiana to
Hawaii. Even though the conference widened its swath, teams continued to leave, and the WAC pipeline of universities ran dry as there just aren't as many FBS or even FCS level institutions in the western third of the country as there are in the eastern third. I see a proliferation of smaller conferences going away as the super conferences take the best of those teams from those smaller conferences if the CFP doesn't expand.
