UCF Football: 5 takeaways from Knights’ perfect 2017 season

5. The 2014 Fiesta Bowl is long forgotten

The UCF Knights won the 2014 Fiesta Bowl for the 2013 season. That victory seems like a decade ago if you listened to the Peach Bowl broadcast, or listened to the talking heads during the 2017 season. It was as if UCF was a new FBS program that had never won a game at the Division I level.

There’s no doubt 12-0 and working up to 13-0 against the Auburn Tigers was a fascinating and exciting story heading into the Peach Bowl. However, UCF was in this same spot with a top-five NFL Draft pick at quarterback and a much stronger strength of schedule having knocked off Penn State and Louisville as well as rival USF and losing a three point game to South Carolina on the way to the Fiesta Bowl against Baylor.

The Baylor Bears and their coach Art Briles were the talk of FBS Power Five football back in 2013, again, a lot has changed in such a short time. The Bears and Knights both fell off but for different reasons. UCF had a lame duck coach and AD Danny White removed George O’Leary and Brent Key paving the way for Scott Frost to become the head football coach.

Out in Waco, Texas, Baylor’s sexual misconduct controversies and Art Briles implications in the cover up saw his career end abruptly while he was at the top of his game. Both coaches deserved to be sent out to pasture and both programs suffered at the hands of that instability. Baylor finished 2017 1-11 and 116th in the S&P+. In 2015, UCF finished 0-12 and looked all but extinct.

Thanks to Scott Frost, Danny White and Shaquem Griffin that Fiesta Bowl and the 0-12 season all seem long forgotten. They’re now cemented in the past and hopefully Coach Huepel, a national champion in his own right, can keep UCF moving forward and onward from O’Leary and the string of controversial coaches UCF had employed since the 1980’s.