UCF’s season has been pretty bad. Pretty really bad. Are they the worst team in college football? Not everyone is in agreement on that.
Ask the people who ridicule the worst in college football and UCF’s season is downright hilarious.
The Knights have lost to everyone and anyone on their schedule, even seemingly the “easy” teams. Losing to FCS Furman and FAU at home on an opening Thursday are enough to make any fan base crawl into a bar and hide (at least the beer is free though).
There are those who actually rank these things.
ESPN’s Bottom 10 has UCF as the worst team in college football, writing:
We have a scramble to the bottom that’s shaping up to be every bit as reminiscent of some of the greatest 1-2 battles in the history of the Bottom 10. I’m of course speaking of the epic to-the-final-horn throwdowns of 2013 and 2014. In ’13, My Hammy of Ohio edged out Georgia State Not Southern on the season’s final weekend. One year later, Georgia State did the impossible, edging out season-long leader SMU, also on the final weekend, and amazingly, without having even played a game that weekend. We know all of this because we looked it up in the Bottom 10 Media Guide, which is actually just a bunch of stuff scribbled down in an old Bortles For Heisman notebook.
Those other teams near the bottom are winless Kansas (a mess of a program that has not seen a bowl game since 2008 and has only 12 wins since 2010).
The other teams include the perpetually awful Eastern Michigan and the relative newcomers from UTSA.
The CBS Sports 128 has UCF as the worst team too, behind the train wreck that has become North Texas, another school that fired its coach midseason.
Those are all human polls though. Biases and the embarrassment of this year come into play. What about statistically?
Remember those BCS computer polls? They are not as low on UCF as the humans are. In fact, they are a bit mixed.
The Kenneth Massey Ratings have UCF No. 125 ahead of Charlotte, North Texas and Eastern Michigan. The Colley Matrix has UCF in last place behind several FCS teams actually. The Rich Billingsley Report has UCF No. 114, well ahead of several teams. And, finally, Dr. Peter Wolfe’s rankings have the Knights as the worst team in FBS, behind several Division II teams.
And one more set of numbers to look up. Football Outsiders has two measures to judge college football teams.
In their F/+ and S&P+ rankings, UCF comes in at No. 125.
No matter how you slice it, UCF’s season have been very very bad. The offense has looked completely ineffective and the defense has had major breakdowns. Injuries have hurt the team too.
It has been a hard-luck season for the Knights. There is no getting around that. And UCF is nowhere near a good football team right now.
Are the Knights the worst though? That part feels debatable. There is certainly a tinge of disappointment with this team. There were a lot of high hopes and just about everyone observing the team and the American believed UCF would at least be bowl eligible.
But they are not the consensus worst team in the nation. And certainly if this team matched up with a UTSA or Eastern Michigan, UCF would have to be favored based on talent.
And the Knights do seem to be turning some things around. They looked significantly better against the Golden Hurricane and made that game a closer game than expected.
Of course, you are what your record says you are at the end of the day.
I think they were the worst. Better luck next time and hopefully they’ll have a better season.