7 Years Later: Is UCF's 'National Championship' Legit?

If you read a summary, say on Wikipedia, Sports-reference.com or even the official UCF site, about the 2017 UCF Knights football team, you can't help but notice a few things. The fact that they went undefeated, won their conference, won with authority in multiple different games and overall, had a historic season, especially given the fact that they went winless just two years prior, are the things that stick out.

It was a year full of impressive feats for the Knights program, however, there is one major aspect that sticks out among everything else regarding this team. That aspect is their claim to the 2017 National Championship. If you know nothing about college football, then you'd think upon reading about this team that the Knights were clear, undisputed national champions that year in football. It's the first thing you see when you click on the university's summary of that year's football team, it's plastered on their stadium and frankly when the 2017 season is mentioned many UCF fans claim the title of national champion.

You, however, along with these UCF fans, are wrong—at least in the most literal sense. That year, the Clemson Tigers won the College Football Playoff and were crowned the official 2017 National Champions. Seven years later, the controversy is still alive and well that UCF should have been crowned champions or at least gotten a shot at the title game.

The Case for UCF's National Championship

UCF has multiple arguments, both legitimate and hypothetical, toward their 2017 National Championship claim. Their championship is recognized by the NCAA, after all, but the Crimson Tide are the CFP champions and therefore, "official" National Champions. In the post-BCS, CFP era, you'd think things would be more definitive, especially given things like this happened in the BCS era. Perhaps this is why we have a 12-team playoff now, then again that still may not solve things.

This being said though, and putting the slight digressions aside, let's start with the legitimate cases. UCF was the only team to go undefeated in 2017 and they did it with authority. Scores like 61-17, 51-23, 63-21 and 73-33 made appearances throughout their schedule, which makes it easy to see why they're now a Big 12 Conference team.

This team had a ton of offensive firepower with two eventual NFL-caliber receivers in Gabe Davis and Tre'Quan Smith and two-time American Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Year, 2017 Archie Griffin Award winner McKenzie Milton leading the charge. This offense led the nation in points per game at 48.2 and was the key driver to the Knights' success.

The Knights beat three teams that year that were ranked at some point during the season, including their Peach Bowl game against the Auburn Tigers, who had beaten the eventual National Runner-Up Alabama Crimson Tide that year 26-14. Their resume certainly wasn't one to ignore, however, the CFP Committee seemingly did.

This brings up the next argument in the case for UCF, which is that if it were not for the four-team playoff model and more parity in the CFP rankings, UCF would have at least had a shot at the championship. Given the fact they beat a team that beat the eventual national champions, went undefeated and looked unstoppable on offense, once again, there is a case to be made, but the committee likely looked at the Group of 5 school as lesser due to strength of schedule, which ranked just No. 75 out of 130 in the FBS.

While the Colley Matrix, the computer-generated sports rating system designed for BCS rankings by Dr. Wesley Colley, had the Knights as their 2017 National Champion, the CFP seemingly took different statistics and aspects of these teams' seasons into account, with UCF's Group of 5 status being the main dealbreaker by the looks of it.

This brings up the part legitimate, part hypothetical argument of Group of 5 teams not getting the chance to "play with the big boys on the biggest stages," big boys being the, at the time, Power Five schools. These schools have tougher schedules, better recruiting and above all else, more money to throw around, that doesn't mean though that Group of 5 schools have no shot at beating these schools. Look at the way the Peach Bowl went for UCF, beating Southeastern Conference member and Alabama vanquisher Auburn 34-27. All UCF needed was a chance, but what would that chance look like should they have gotten it?

The Case Against UCF's National Championship

While there are points to be made regarding UCF's historic 2017 run, can we actually consider UCF to be crowned as "National Champions" or is that rather a little faux-title they've given themselves because they're angry at the fact they weren't given the chance to play against college football's actual best and brightest programs?

Let's face it: It is a fact that there is a gap between Group of 5 schools and power conference schools. A gap in money, a gap in recruiting, a gap in facilities and overall a gap in talent, at least at a team level. There's a reason why when coaches move from a Group of 5 school to a power-conference school, such as the way Brett Brennan did from the San Jose State Spartans to Arizona Wildcats or Lance Leipold did with the Buffalo Bulls to Kansas Jayhawks. They call it moving "up to" that school rather than simply just calling it "moving jobs."

Power-conference schools bring in the money, command the TV time and dominate college football's talking points, but what happens when a Group of 5 school does sneak their way into the New Year's Six or the CFP?

On the one hand, you have teams like the 2007 Boise State Broncos. Undefeated kings of the Mountain West Conference, the Broncos got a chance to play in the Fiesta Bowl versus the Oklahoma Sooners, where they beat the vaunted Sooners program in overtime 43-42 off the historic "Statue of Liberty" play call. You also have instances like the most recent Group of 5 New Year's Six win, where the Tulane Green Wave bested the mighty USC Trojans in the 2022 Cotton Bowl 46-45.

However, on the other hand, many more times than not the Group of 5 team that is lucky enough to make it to a New Year's Six bowl game or even luckier to make it into the CFP gets absolutely walloped by a Power Five/Four squad, hence why the committee, to this point, has been hesitant to select Group of 5 teams to play in these big games. See most recently: Oregon versus Liberty in the 2024 Fiesta Bowl. It doesn't make for good TV or good competition, in most cases.

While the 12-team format may rectify this, the main point being made here is Group of 5 versus power conference is normally "David versus Goliath." The odds are not in the Group of 5's favor, but they can get lucky sometimes. Looking at these scores in big games such as New Year's Six and CFP games, you see a pattern. The games that Group of 5 teams are normally close contests, while the games that the power conference teams win normally aren't.

Plain and simple, the odds would not be in UCF's favor should they have made the CFP, and while their undefeated season is commendable, it came against lesser competition. The win against Auburn was not necessarily a fluke, but look at Auburn's program from a broader glance. They were on a downhill slope from the moment they won the 2011 National Championship and Cam Newton stepped off campus, now sitting in the lower tier of SEC competition trying their best to keep out of the dumpster with Vanderbilt. They're a program that doesn't win consistently like Alabama. UCF simply met them at the right time when they were having a better-than-average season.

In order to win a national championship you have to test your mettle against the best and show you can beat the best consistently, and while UCF never got their chance to do that, do we honestly think that would go over well against the likes of Clemson, the Crimson Tide, the Washington Huskies or the Ohio State Buckeyes? Teams that week in and out, year in and year out, tested their mettle against the best and when they got to the CFP, played against the programs that proved their worth enough to be there.

The Verdict

Whether you agree that UCF should be crowned 2017 National Champions or not, the fact of the matter is this season for the Knights was special either way. Two years removed from a winless season and they found themselves undefeated, top of their conference and New Year's Six bowl champions. There is certainly something to be said about that and their story will forever be remembered both in UCF circles and college football circles.

While it would be a bit more special if they were crowned undisputed national champions by winning the CFP, who's to say how good of a chance they had at that? Auburn may have beaten Alabama that year and UCF may have beaten Auburn, but that certainly doesn't mean UCF could have bested the likes of a Nick Saban-led, teeming with NFL-caliber, regular national championship-attending squad. There's no guarantees they would have even seen the Crimson Tide in the final.

The question bears itself like this: Would UCF fans rather claim their "National Championship" with an asterisk and the NCAA's "blessing" or would they have rather tested that mettle not once, but twice against competition far more likely to beat them nine times out of 10?

Frankly, it should be okay that UCF claims this title. It makes for a fun college football story and they made college football history by doing so. If a stickler like the NCAA can agree that their title is legit, then we should too. They may not be national champions in the record-keeping books, but they are "National Champions" to those who believe them to be so and whose hearts they touched by being a rare Group of 5 success story.

There is absolutely no way they would have been champions of the 2017 CFP—or would they have been? As the fellow controversial and divisive figure Kanye West once said at the Grammy's, "I guess we'll never know."