Editor's Note: Dick Weiss, a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame, has covered college sports in Philadelphia and New York for more than 40 years. He will be providing regular commentary for the American Athletic Conference during the 2013-14 season.
When the final Associated Press poll was released last Tuesday, the University of Central Florida had cracked the top 10.
It's about time voters noticed there has been something special going on in Orlando this season. The Knights won the American Athletic Conference and put a punctuation mark on a 12-1 season with a 52-42 victory against Big 12 champion Baylor in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.
Technically, this is the final year for The American to receive an automatic bid to a BCS bowl. But the reconstructed league, which is trying to reestablish its brand and had two teams ranked in the top 15, deserves more consideration going forward based on their on-the-field performance in the postseason.
The Knights are just a three-point loss to South Carolina from finishing undefeated and dominated a team that was ranked sixth in polls and was an overwhelming 17-point favorite. They torched a defense that had looked so impressive during a victory over Sugar Bowl champion Oklahoma. Quarterback Blake Bortles abused the Baylor secondary, throwing for 301 yards, rushing for an additional 93 yards and accounting for four total touchdowns. The Knights also rushed for 225 yards with Storm Johnson gaining 124 yards and scoring three touchdowns.
It is hard to dismiss this type of offensive dominance.
This was no fluke. "We caught a hot team,'' Baylor coach Art Briles admitted. "They jumped on us early and we could never catch up. We could never turn it around when it needed turning.''
The Knights' 52 points and 550 yards were the most ever against a ranked team in school history.
"There were not very many people in the country who gave us a shot,'' Bortles said. "I think we really came out here and showed the country what UCF's about."
The five automatic-qualifying conferences involved in the new BCS format would rather not know. They would like nothing better than to create a cartel that separates them from the rest of the FBS leagues, limiting access to the highest ranked team in the American, Mountain West, MAC, Conference USA and Sun Belt in an attempt to secure the most wealth possible in college football 's new world order.
But there is a growing parity out there.
Florida State from the ACC ran the table with a perfect 14-0 record and won the BCS National Championship, breaking the SEC's stranglehold on the title with a 34-31 victory over that league's champion Auburn. The SEC, which set the bar in the sport for seven years, was 7-3 in the postseason but there have been slight cracks in the armor. Georgia lost to Nebraska a year after beating the Huskers by two touchdowns. South Carolina had to rally to beat Wisconsin. Texas A&M had to rally to defeat Duke. Ole Miss needed a safety to get by Georgia Tech.
And, most importantly, Oklahoma defeated third-ranked, double-digit favorite Alabama, 45-31 in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, which emboldened a premier coach like Bob Stoops of the Sooners to suggest again that reports that the SEC was hands-down the best league were nothing more than "propaganda.''
The Pac-12 was 6-3, but USC's victory over No. 20 Fresno State was its only victory over a ranked team. The Big 12 was 3-3. The ACC was 5-6 and the Big Ten ranked last among AQ conferences with a 2-5 postseason record.
UCF and current American neighbor Louisville, which finished 15th in the final AP poll, each beat a team in its showcase game that finished in the upper tier of AQ conferences that have a spot at the table. Louisville, which finished 12-1, won its second major bowl in two years, defeating Miami (Fla) from the ACC, 36-9, in the Russell Athletic Bowl in Orlando as quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, who was born in Miami, came back to dominate the school he once verbally committed to. Bridgewater passed for a career-high 447 yards and accounted for four touchdowns. Last year, the Cardinals defeated SEC representative Florida in the Sugar Bowl.
Bridgewater should be the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft and Louisville is leaving for the ACC next year, so the American will have to hope that UCF can find a quarterback to replace Bortles, who has declared for the draft and should be one of the top three quarterbacks taken. A second team like Houston can emerge as a replacement for Louisville and find its way into the national rankings to keep momentum going.
"My feeling all along was that our top-tier teams would be extremely competitive with the top tier nationally, and our lower-tier teams would be very competitive all season, and they were.'' commissioner Mike Aresco said. “The Fiesta Bowl win was huge for us.”
All year long, TV analysts promoted the fact Rutgers was going to a much tougher league in the Big Ten. But how much tougher? UCF beat Penn State. USF went to Michigan State and almost beat the Big Ten champion and Cincinnati beat Purdue, 42-7.
This is an offensive-minded league that was filled with good quarterbacks and played entertaining football. The television rating for the Fiesta Bowl was nine percent higher than last year’s Orange Bowl, which was televised in the same time slot. It is obvious fans love high-scoring football.
It is hard to overstate what UCF’s win meant to the conference. “I was thrilled,” Aresco said. “There was a definite buzz later in the week in Pasadena regarding UCF’s outstanding performance against a very good and explosive team.”
Aresco said having UCF playing in the Fiesta Bowl has been a rewarding experience and it’s hard to overstate what the win meant to the conference. "UCF joined this league with expectations that they would better their situation and it has proven out for them,” he said.
The point is, the best teams from the excluded conferences can play, particularly if they have a marquee quarterback, and will be sufficiently motivated wherever they have a chance to compete against brand-name schools. There are too many examples of non-BCS success stories in postseason to slam the door in their faces. In the last 10 years, Utah beat Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl in 2005 and Alabama in the Sugar Bowl in 2008. Boise State has beaten Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl in 2006, TCU defeated Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl in 2010.
All they ask is a chance.
I've always been a strong advocate of an eight-team playoff, with the winners of the eight highest-ranked conferences seeded accordingly. The four top-seeded teams can host first-round games, which should guarantee sellouts. Like the NFL, there is the fear of injuries. This is not Division II and III. The collisions among big bodies have consequences and the extra game can take its toll.
But, if the presidents had no problem signing off on a playoff, this eight-team format will maximize the regular season again and provide a chance for an equal-opportunity national championship game.