College Football Playoff: What chaos does UCF need to reach the Top 4?

Step 7: UCF ends up undefeated for the second straight year

Of course, all of this will be moot if UCF fails to win out and take the American Athletic Conference title for the second straight year. The Knights need to extend their winning streak to 25 games to make everything else fall in to place.

When Scott Frost moved back to his alma mater to take over the Nebraska job, the wheels could easily have fallen off the program in Orlando. Instead, another former national championship-winning Big 12 quarterback got his first head coaching gig and has kept the machine humming. Josh Heupel, the former Oklahoma quarterback, could have another team in the title picture right out of the gate in his first season at the helm.

The degree of difficulty increases over the next few weeks, as the Knights take on Cincinnati on the road in Week 12 and then the War on I-4 against rival South Florida on the long Thanksgiving weekend. That would set up UCF back in the American Athletic Conference title game.

If they take down the AAC West champion (likely Houston), and the rest of these things shake out, it would put them alongside Alabama as the only undefeated teams in the country.