This is not going to be a very popular column among UCF football fans who are rightfully giddy about the release of the Knights’ inaugural Big 12 schedule earlier this week.
I realize this was more than just an ordinary football schedule. As Marc Daniels, the school’s legendary radio voice, told me earlier this week, this very first schedule release was a day of celebration and validation for Knight Nation because it actually made UCF’s long-awaited entry into a Power 5 league tangible and “real.”
So as long as we’re keeping it real, here’s the unpopular message for UCF fans as the Knights get ready for their maiden voyage into the Power 5:
Get ready to raise your donation level and lower your expectation level.
At least for the first year or two.
The weekly grind of playing, recruiting and overall spending in a big-boy league is not going to be easy.
Let’s start with the athletic budget at UCF, which ranked near the top of the American Athletic Conference but will be near the bottom of the Big 12. It’s no secret that the existing members of the Big 12 have been around a lot longer than UCF, which means they have been cashing their annual $30 million Power 5 TV checks for quite some time.
It’s not like UCF can just snap its fingers and start spending at the rate of, say, Kansas, which allocates about $95 million per year on athletics compared to UCF’s $60 million.
“The first basketball coach at Kansas was James Naismith — the man who invented the game,” notes UCF athletic director Terry Mohajir. “We’re going to be competing against programs that have been playing sports since the late 1800s. These are programs with long, storied histories. We’re behind some other schools because of the [TV] distribution dollars they’ve been receiving for years and years.”
UCF, once it starts getting its full allotment of Big 12 TV revenue in 2025, will eventually catch up, but in the meantime the Knights will have to rely on more donations, ticket sales and other revenue streams. During his National Signing Day news conference on Wednesday, football coach Gus Malzahn was not bashful about asking fans to start donating to a collective — “The Kingdom” — that raises NIL money and distributes it to UCF athletes and recruits.
“I really want to encourage our donors to help us with the collective,” Malzahn said. “This is a new age of college football and we want to continue to recruit at a high level and to keep our top players [from entering the transfer portal]. We’re going to need help [from donors] with that.”
Malzahn has even admitted that he is giving up some of his coaching duties (like play-calling) so he can concentrate more on fundraising. Of course, he isn’t judged on how much money he raises; he’s judged by how many games he wins. And, quite frankly, UCF fans have been spoiled ever since Scott Frost and Josh Heupel posted back-to-back unbeaten regular seasons in 2017 and 2018. There is a vocal fraction of UCF fans who seem to think going unbeaten should be the norm instead of the rarity.
Many entitled UCF fans grumbled when Heupel won “only” 10 games in his second season and grumbled even more when the Knights finished with 9 wins under Malzahn last season even though they advanced to the conference championship game.
Hopefully, UCF fans realize that winning 8 or 9 games in the Big 12 this season would be considered a major success. Granted, there’s the remote possibility the Knights could run the table in its inaugural Big 12 season, but that’s a pipe dream.
UCF opens its first Big 12 season by playing the last two conference champions — Kansas State and Baylor — and will face eight conference opponents who were in bowl games last season.
A case could be made that the Big 12 was the deepest conference in college football last season and that was with Oklahoma and Texas enduring subpar seasons. This will not be like UCF’s first season in the American when the Knights ran the table (in 2013) in the conference and ended up in the Fiesta Bowl where, ironically, they manhandled Big 12 champion Baylor.
Make no mistake about it, this time it’s gonna be a lot tougher on a weekly basis when UCF is playing much better teams in front of much larger crowds. Here’s all you need to know: UCF finished No. 1 in average attendance in the American last season, but if the Knights had been competing in the Big 12 they would have been dead-last in attendance. Even if you take departing members Texas and Oklahoma and their huge crowds out of the equation, the Big 12’s average attendance was 22,000 fans per game more than the American.
“We’re not tiptoeing into the Big 12,” Mohajir said when I asked him if fans should temper their expectations this season. “We’re going in to win it — this year, next year, every single year. … From a fan standpoint, being optimistic is always a good thing.”
I agree.
Knight Nation should be optimistic, but also realistic.
In Year 1 of the Big 12, UCF fans should just enjoy the journey without worrying about the final destination.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and HD 101.1-2
