HOOVER, ALA. — OK, we can officially quash the idea that the Florida Gators have been ducking the UCF Knights for all these years.
In fact, Gators head coach Dan Mullen not only said at SEC Media Days Monday to bring on the Knights, he admitted that he actually pushed to help make the long-awaited series happen.
Although it hasn’t officially been announced, the Gators and the Knights have agreed in principle to a future football series that will include two games in Gainesville (2024 and 2033) and one game at UCF in 2030. Although the school’s two athletic directors — UF’s Scott Stricklin and UCF’s Terry Mohajir — worked out the specifics, Mullen and new UCF coach Gus Malzahn were integral in making the series happen.
“I think it’s great,” Mullen said when I asked him Monday about playing UCF. “When Gus called me and asked about playing, I said I absolutely want to do it, but the way we’ve done it at Florida in the past is that we only do 2-for-1s [with non-Power 5 programs]. And Gus says, ‘Well, I’m all for that, too!’ Then I said, ‘Well, let’s call the ADs and make it happen.’
“I think it’s great for the state of Florida,” Mullen added. “National games are exciting because you’re playing games in different parts of the country, but I think local games are really exciting, too, for the people you live around. Is Florida-UCF a big game for the people in Arizona? Probably not, but it’s huge game for the people in the state of Florida. You have to have a balance [between local and national], but I love playing UCF because most of our players and their families will be excited about the game.”
From a UF perspective, it will also give the Gators a chance to put an end to the constant sniping from UCF’s fan base and players that the Knights have been the best program in the state over the last few years.
Although most of the current players at UF and UCF will never get a chance to play in this series, UF’s players at SEC Media Days say they would love to play against the Knights — if for no other reason than to shut them up.
“I think it will be good to show them [UCF] who runs the state of Florida,” UF defensive end Zach Carter said.
And who would that be, Zach?
“The Gators,” Carter replied.
It is a testament to UCF’s success under Scott Frost and Josh Heupel that the Knights have risen to a point where they have become a big enough national brand to annoy the Gators. After all, based on history, the Gators have always been reluctant about playing up-and-coming programs in Florida.
As I wrote three years ago:
“For decades, the high-and-mighty Gators have been using their stature as Florida’s oldest, richest public university to try to stunt the growth of other emerging football programs in the state. Let’s not forget, it took immense pressure from the governor and state legislature to get the Gators to even schedule a series with Florida State back in 1958 — a full decade after FSU started playing football. Even then, the Gators demanded that all of the games be played in Gainesville, which they were for the first six years of the series.
“... And let’s also remember, the Gators dropped Miami from their annual schedule after 1987 when the SEC expanded its conference schedule from six to seven games. The Gators were naturally accused of being chickens when they eliminated the emerging powerhouse ‘Canes from their schedule.”
It was back in 2018 when many UCF fans blew up Stricklin’s Twitter account, thinking the Florida AD worked behind the scenes to veto a potential Peach Bowl matchup between the Knights and the Gators. It was a natural assumption considering Stricklin was then a member of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, which sets the match-ups for the major New Year’s Six bowl games.
It did seem questionable at the time that the selection committee would ship UCF to the Fiesta Bowl to play LSU and put Florida in the Peach Bowl against a Michigan program UF had played three times in the previous four seasons. Why not Michigan vs. LSU in the Fiesta Bowl in a battle between two storied college football programs who have never played each other? And why not UF and UCF in the Peach Bowl in a Sunshine State showdown just a short drive for both fan bases?
Stricklin insisted then that he would have loved to play UCF in a bowl game, and is proving now that he’s certainly not afraid to play the Knights. When Mohajir was scrambling to fill out UCF’s 2024 schedule, he called big-time Power 5 ADs all over the country looking for a game, and Stricklin was the only one to return the call.
Finally, we can stop the griping and grousing about ducks and chickens and start talking about Gators and Knights.
Bring it on.
“It’s going to be fun,,” Mullen says.
That’s what I’m talking about.
Sometimes, it seems, ADs and coaches forget that “fun” is what college football is supposed to be all about.
