When the NFL’s brightest stars take the field at the 2018 Pro Bowl in Orlando, they will be joined by UCF’s football team. In recognition of their national championship, undefeated season, the UCF Knights will be honored by the NFL following the first quarter of the game.
Maybe this is just a case of a school’s PR department getting a little too breathless and all that’s going on is a nice hat tip for a great, undefeated season. Then again, maybe not. Of course, this being the Pro Bowl, will anybody be watching to find out for sure?
Get The Picture 
Who other than the school, the Orlando Sentinel, and Danny Kanell is recognizing UCF as “national champions”?
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UCF is so pitiful
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And … thanks, Barners, for creating this by not showing up in Atlanta.
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The Florida Governor..Lol…
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Tennessee and Barn folks. For them, it beats reality.
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Who cares? I’ll recognize their title over Bama’s. Dawgs or nobody. Also, it’s great that they beat Auburn, helps us in recruiting. I hope every SEC team loses all their non conference and bowl games from here on out.
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Wish Tech had played them & kicked their asses.
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I have standards – no way would I pull for tech against anyone
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UCF claiming to be national champs is akin to me proclaiming to be the chairman at Google…and that I’m married to Charleze Theron. Yet, astonishingly, various organizations and media types decide that since I’m confidently stating as such it must be true, and thus I’m listed as chairman and Charleze’s beau.
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Dude, your wife is hot
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Except in MONSTER.
Yuck!
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I have to say if we had beaten Bama this would bug the shit out of me. Since we lost I can just sit back and chuckle.
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I repeat: This is what you get when a team goes undefeated in the regular season (the ONLY undefeated team in the nation) and the committee leaves them out of the playoff. If UCF had been included the Knights likely would have lost but we’ll never know for sure because they weren’t given that chance. The committee caused this and it will lead directly to expansion of the number of playoff teams.
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Lighten up, Francis.
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I am no fan of the ersatz playoffs and the silly committee, but I give the committee a pass here.
The goofy playoff structure commands the committee to select the four teams THE COMMITTEE BELIEVES to be the best four teams, and each year the CFP invites the four teams the committee believes are the best four.
Your argument is that the committee should have ignored its charge, identify the four it determines to be the best four, and give 25% of the invitations to those it DOES NOT believe to be in the best four. You have never argued that UCF is in fact one of the best four; instead you have argued that the committee should have given it an invitation despite not being one of the best four.
Bitch about the CFP telling the committee to select the four it thinks are the best four, if you will, but it does not make sense to blame the committee for doing what it was told to do.
If we are going to have a playoff it should be a real playoff, not an ESPN Invitational.
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I agree, the current playoff is a half-baked idea but UCF, along with USC 2003, is a part of an organization that put the playoff structure in place. For them to accept any/all of the benefits derived from participating in CFB they should disavow any attempts to undermine the results of the CFP, or BCS. You didn’t get invited, for good reason, stop whining. Get you a snuggle toy, call a therapist, and remained curled up in a fetal position with the other children in this country.
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UCF’s 15 minutes grew annoying about 5 minutes ago. Playoff expansion will happen the same way conference expansion happens – when someone can put together a compelling spread sheet that proves (a) 8 pie slices will be bigger than 4 by a reasonable margin and (b) that the 4 additional pie slices and additional revenue aren’t simply being re-directed from P5 conference championship games or other post-regular season revenue opportunities. Until then, no one in the P5 is budging, and UCF’s strutting is proving that the P5 isn’t going to a pay a price for it. Because average fans find it cute, then old, then a channel-changer.
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Well, I’m not an economics major, but if I have a 12″ pie cut in 4 slices, which I sell for $2.50 each, that’s $10.00. If I still have people wanting pie, I can cut my pie into 8 slices and sell those for $2.50 each, That’s 20 bucks! I’ll do that all day long as long as the customers will pay. Hell, Let’s cut it into 16 slices ……… Y’all see where I’m going with this?
This is not a dig at you, ASEF. I’m just being cynical. Money is driving our sport now and I’m not crazy about where it’s headed.
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Disney and Fox are trimming costs left and right. Those are the two customers. They would have to put a proposal on the table that (a) was x2+ the current money and (b) keep payments for conference games and bowls at pre-8 market levels. Or something in that ballpark.
Not seeing it.
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I was looking at it more from the supply side. Selling airtime, you see. More pieces of pie.
Net-net, if we’ll pay for it they’ll sell it to us.
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You’re confusing your standards with the committee’s. The committee was supposed to put the best four teams, with the most impressive resumes, in the playoff. Absolutely nobody outside of Orlando thinks that included UCF.
But I’m sure they’ll take your preferences under advisement in the future. 😉
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Maybe they can go to the White House or attend the SOTU address next week for recognition.
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If I had any plans to watch the SuperBowl they would be cancelled now.
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Cue Bama fans levitating with rage and posting YouTube videos of them burning all their NFL-related possessions (if they haven’t already done so after the kneeling-protest controversy).
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If Malkom Parrish hadn’t blown a coverage, this sort of thing would probably really piss me off. As it is, I merely find it amusing.
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Had we run our offense in the 2nd half like we did in the first, the situation with Parrish/Sanders on the OT final play would never have occurred, imo.
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Did he blow it? Georgia handled the same play the same way early in the second half, with Sanders faking boundary coverage and then coming back to the middle. Worked the first time. And the last thing Parrish wanted to risk was a DPI bailing out a 2nd and 26.
That play never happens if Bama could kick a FG. Hate to see this all come down on Parrish’s shoulders.
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Pfft! As if anyone watches the pro bowl…
Anywhoo, while UCF’s team is marching across the field, the ncaa should announce that next year’s cfb championship game will be played on a Saturday at 6:00 pm. America would welcome a respite from those awful nfl playoff games.
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So UCF’s Peach Bowl win is supposed to convince us that they are national title worthy even though that bowl was a huge disappointment to AU and UCF’s Super Bowl. Conversely, we should ignore the bowl performances of the American’s two best team’s outside of UCF, Memphis and USF. Those two team’s hung a combined 100+ points on UCF at UCF’s home field, only to lose in the closing seconds. USF and Memphis played Texas Tech and Iowa State, two Big 12 team’s with TEN combined losses. USF beat Texas Tech by 3 in the closing seconds and Memphis lost to Iowa State. The committee made the right choice on UCF. I’m sure there was very little discussion about them making it based on their conference and the fact that they didn’t have the quality wins needed to be considered. When the playoffs move to 8, team’s like UCF will be able to take their ass kicking in the first round of the playoff..then, they’ll long for the days of not making it and being able to pretend they were better than everyone else.
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I personally dgaf what UCF decides to claim, but I do wish they had made the playoff over Bama, I feel pretty confident that the dawgs would be hanging a banner if that were the case.
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I’ve been saying that since the committee foisted Bama on us. Bama played one less game than us, effectively they got a bye. No fair.
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If yall would read up on Danny White, the UCF AD, and see what he has been succeeding in doing for several years, you could get a glimmer of how this all came about. He made the Buffalo Bulls (MAC) the college team of New York after they had languished so-so for years and after they were listed at the bottom of The Bottom Ten for years. He served as Ole Miss senior asst AD while getting his Ph D there; he is head of a UCF alum donor group that trusts him to oversee $70M for UCF facilities while serving as UCF AD to boot; his family is replete with ADs for several major schools, including Duke.
He is a mover and a shaker who builds athletic depts. and he has yet to reach the age of 40. A leader like this would be expected to approach the NFL when they are playing their All-Star Game in Orlando and getting more recognition for his team while riling the SEC and other big conferences. Bianchi is riding White’s shoulders for more recognition as well because he recognizes that this guy has just begun and is the moving PR force that no one is looking at very closely and is the force that’s behind all the UCF falderal.
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I Blame Auburn for this foolishness….
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Sort of on topic since it’s the NFL and leaving UCF out of the playoff, but where are all of the Northeast sports media complaining that the Super Bowl isn’t geographically “diverse”?
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