I will not wear that gaudy orange. I will not. It is not in my color wheel and I’m not gonna wear it.
Sandra Bullock’s fictionalized portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side has a point. Josh Heupel disagrees, apparently.
The former UCF coach is now the new coach at Tennessee. He left a school where the conference it was in was perhaps the only thing stopping him from competing for an actual, consensus, widely accepted national title. He went to a school where the conference is probably the only thing that isn’t standing in his way.
It’s 2021, so inheriting a bit of a mess from the previous administration is in, but you still also probably don’t want to step into a school where you might have to deal with sanctions because the previous guy slipped a few benjamins in with a Happy Meal. You probably don’t want to walk into a situation where fans and boosters will second guess every decision you make and might actually have more authority than you do.
Oh, you also have to play Georgia, Florida and Alabama every year.
Good luck, Josh. UCF’s quarterback Dillon Gabriel at least seems happy with the move.
I think the term is “yikes.”
One more joke about how rough the Tennessee job is before I move on to the real point here:
McKenzie Milton is no longer the UCF guy who transferred to the worst situation this offseason.
Now that that’s over, the main order of business: Would you rather coach at Tennessee or UCF? Let’s ask Steven Godfrey.
The UCF job used to be trash. In recent memory, the Knights won what seems like negative games in a season. Then they turned it around with a quarterback who went to the NFL and thrived as a meme on The Good Place. Scott Frost went to Nebraska and became, himself, a meme.
But those days are in the past. This is not a trash team, a trash school, a trash situation, a trash conference.
This is a place with expectations. This is a place where 6-4 during a plague is a terrible year.
First let’s unpack that 6-4 season. The wins are whatever. This team put up a trillion yards of offense and ran a billion plays a game. I’m not going to waste my time analyzing the wins of a good team. The losses, however…
To Tulsa, 34-26: I turned this one off and went to bed because UCF had this in the bag. Late in the second quarter, this was 23-5. Then Zach Smith got hot and the Knights cooled off. This game was more than winnable. This was a letdown by a team, ranked 11th at the time, that let its foot off the gas. UCF should have won that.
To Memphis, 50-49: I did not turn this one off and go to bed because this game was a controlled substance. Dillon Gabriel threw for 601 yards and five touchdowns with no picks and rushed for another, only to be outdueled by Brady White, who threw for 486 and six scores and rushed for another. Yet again, UCF had a lead, this time of 12 points with four minutes left. Then Brady White did his thing, and the Knights lost by a point. At one point they led 43-29. This game was more than winnable.
To Cincinnati, 36-33: Cincinnati, as they did to everyone, contained the Knights offense, holding them to just 359 yards. Despite that, this was a game at the end. The Knights defense needed to get a stop in the last five minutes or so, but the Bearcats, as they did so well, were able to run out the clock. Cincinnati was able to dictate the pace at the end, and that’s not what you want when you’re a quick-strike team like UCF. Despite that… this game was winnable.
To BYU, 49-23, in the Boca Raton Bowl: Season’s over, it’s three days before Christmas, you’re playing BYU? Look, I get it. This game didn’t matter. Plus it was in Boca Raton. Nothing counts there.
UCF fans are obviously not happy about this year. As I said, they have expectations now. But imagine, for a second, about three clutch defensive stops. A big play in that Tulsa game could’ve derailed that incredible comeback. A medium-sized play was all that was needed to stop one of those late Memphis drives during that comeback. If those two happen, you have a battle of undefeateds in that Cincinnati game. And in that one, all it took was one stop while the Bearcats ran out the clock. Don’t even think about that BYU game -- those three things happen and UCF is playing meaningful football in December.
This team has the pieces to continue to be explosive on offense. They topped 50 points three times and had 49 twice. Gabriel is back. On defense, it isn’t the points they put up that matter. You can win games 60-30. It’s those comebacks. Just enough defense to keep from wasting all those points.
The good thing for whoever takes this job is that UCF is situated right in a hotbed of recruiting that it doesn’t tap very well. Everybody else is getting recruits from Central Florida but Central Florida. You don’t need the five-stars either. Just the good three-stars and a four-star or two. That’s it.
It’s easy to understand why everyone wants this job and nobody wanted the Tennessee job.