AD Danny White explains why UCF claimed a National Championship
By Kevin Duffey
Published:
If you believe all publicity is good publicity, UCF AD Danny White would likely agree with you.
While many around the country are poking fun at UCF for claiming a National Championship, Knights fans and administration are dead serious on getting their message out.
Following UCF’s 34-27 win over Auburn in the Peach Bowl, the Knights’ brand was everywhere around the country. After all, UCF was the only school in the entire country to finish 13-0; so, it’s not entirely too crazy, right? Of course, things can go overboard.
White recently spoke to 247Sports and explained his reasoning behind leading the charge for UCF claiming a National Championship.
“We’re trying to create a conversation,” White told 247Sports. “I don’t know how you can decide a true national champion with four subjectively-picked teams by a committee. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s the only sport in America where it’s not settled on the field or the court. Professional or college, there’s no other sport where you can be your conference champion, you can play every single game and win every single one of them and have no opportunity for the so-called overall championship. We mean no disrespect to Georgia and certainly Alabama, who ended up winning the game; they’re the CFP champions. But we feel very strongly our kids deserve — there are several computer polls that agree with us — to be called national champions. Since the dawn of college football, that has always happened. In this circumstance, certainly the way the Peach Bowl played out, [Auburn] has a great team. Auburn beat Georgia and Alabama. There’s a compelling case that our team deserves to be national champions absent a system, an expanded playoff, that truly decides it on the field.
“I feel like as a leader and athletic director, it’s my job to always prioritize our student-athletes. I always will. And I’m going to fight for them when appropriate and I feel like it’s appropriate to fight for them right now.”
The Orlando Sentinel gave UCF a special “National Champions” section in the paper; UCF also had a championship parade where fans chanted “We Want Bama.” Florida governor Rick Scott even declared the Knights national champions. Heck, even UCF fans forked over the cash to put up a billboard in Tuscaloosa begging for a “home-and-home series” with Alabama.
Something tells us we haven’t heard the end of it either.
A graduate of the University of Florida and founder of Saturday Down South, Kevin is a college football enthusiast.
