ORLANDO, Fla. — The tiny minnow in a small pond has suddenly grown into a big fish in a big pond.
The little kid has finally been invited to sit at the grownups’ table.
The sleeping giant didn’t just wake up on this fantabulous Friday; he woke up, had three cups of coffee and is on a caffeine buzz you wouldn’t believe.
UCF is officially in the Power 5.
UCF is officially in the big-time.
UCF is officially in the Big 12.
After all these years, all these fears, all these crying-in-your-beers, UCF has arrived.
Can you believe it?
Can you conceive it?
Can you perceive it?
And why in the hell am I writing in rhymes?
I have no idea!!!
I guess because I’m so excited and so happy for all of the UCF believers who worked so hard over the decades to make this day possible.
The state of Florida officially now has a Big 4 in college football:
Florida, Florida State, Miami and — a standing ovation, please — UCF.
“This is a landmark day for anyone ever associated with UCF,” athletics director Terry Mohajir declared on this glorious Friday when UCF, along with Cincinnati, Houston and BYU, were invited into the Big 12.
It was, in fact, the most significant day in UCF sports history; a day that Dick Nunis, the inaugural chairman of UCF’s Board of Trustees and one of the school’s biggest financial boosters, said, “We’ve all been working for and dreaming of for a long time.”
This move — this monumental move — will benefit UCF in every way imaginable. It will mean more money; lots more money. Even though it will probably end up costing the Knights between $10-20 million to buy out of the American Athletic Conference, they will get that money back tenfold in the coming years. There are some estimates that once UCF starts getting a full share of the Big 12′s revenue-sharing pie, it could mean an extra $250 million in UCF’s athletic coffers over the next decade.
And, of course, it will mean more exposure, more prestige, more high-caliber players — not only in recruiting-rich Florida, but it also will give the Knights a recruiting foothold in talent-rich Texas.
“It’s fixing to get very exciting around here,” UCF coach Gus Malzahn said. “The future is very, very bright.”
Don’t kid yourself, the Big 12 also benefits from adding UCF. Don’t look now, but UCF, an institution born in 1968, is now the youngest and biggest university (enrollment of more than 70,000) in the Power 5. Moreover, UCF gives the league a TV and recruiting presence in Florida — the third most-populated state.
And while remaining Big 12 teams might not want to hear it, UCF enters the league as one of its most exciting brands and top TV draws — assets that will grow exponentially over the next few years. If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it a million times: If you give UCF the massive influx of TV money and exposure that other Power 5 programs have, then the Knights will blow by half of those programs in five years.
Just hearing Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby talk about UCF being a “national brand” and “moving the needle” made me think back to conversations over the years I’ve had with UCF’s sports pioneers and how much Friday’s Big 12 announcement meant to them. This day wasn’t just meaningful for the current administrative team of Mohajir, school president Alexander Cartwright and current board chairman Alex Martins — all of whom have worked tirelessly to make this happen — it was a day for the dreamers and doers of the past who put the pieces in place.
This day was also for the team’s first coach, Don Jonas, and all the players on that inaugural UCF team of 1979 that played their first game in a driving rainstorm in a cow pasture at St. Leo College. Jonas was an unpaid volunteer who worked for the city. None of the players was on scholarship and had to buy their own shoes and socks and jerseys and jocks. They dressed in the public bathrooms next to the old baseball field.
“My locker was a hook on the wall in the handicapped stall,” Bill Giovanetti, the team’s star linebacker, told me once.
And this day was for all of the former players who followed that inaugural rag-tag bunch — the grunts and the grinders as well as the shining stars such as Daunte Culpepper, Brandon Marshall, Kevin Smith, Blake Bortles, McKenzie Milton, the Griffin Twins and Dillon Gabriel.
And this day was for all the former coaches; dedicated, driven men such as Gene McDowell, George O’Leary, Mike Kruczek, Scott Frost and Josh Heupel who boldly sold their vision of UCF’s untapped potential.
“This is a game-changer,” O’Leary said of joining the Big 12. “It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. This is a great day for UCF.”
And this was a day for former school administrators and athletic directors who raised the funds and built the infrastructure. I’m talking about men such as former president John Hitt, who oversaw and orchestrated the growth explosion of UCF as a university and an athletic program. And I’m talking about former ADs such as Steve Sloan, Steve Orsini and, of course, Danny White, who famously declared UCF national champion in 2017; a move that riled up the Power 5 elite but also made them take notice.
And this day was for all of the well-heeled boosters who ponied up money over the years to keep a cash-strapped athletic department afloat and to help build facilities such as the integral on-campus stadium. Men like Nunis, Jerry Roth, David Albertson, Ken Dixon, Tony Nicholson and, of course, the late Wayne Densch — the former Anheuser-Busch beer distributor who saved UCF’s football program from extinction.
McDowell told me before he passed away that the school’s board of trustees was prepared to shut down the football program in the mid-1980s if enough money couldn’t be raised to erase the university’s $1.5 million football debt. Densch pretty much erased that debt with one stroke of his pen when he wrote a check for $1 million.
“I was introduced to Wayne through some mutual friends,” McDowell recalled. “We went fishing a few times, drank some Scotch, and Wayne said he’d like to do something to help his local university. His first donation was for a million dollars and that pretty much saved the program right there. When I went to thank Wayne for the donation, he looked at me and said, ‘Coach, there’s more where that came from.’ ”
And, most importantly, this day was for the hundreds of thousands of UCF fans over the years who have given their passion, their spirit and hard-earned money to the program. For far too long, they have been treated like snot-nosed little brothers and have been smeared, scorned and scoffed at by fans at Florida, Florida State and Miami.
“I used to wear my UCF hat and jersey around to barbecues and get disgusted looks from SEC fans,” loyal UCF alumnus Charles Tolman said. “UCF used to be belittled constantly and were shut away in the basement of college football where nobody would see us. They would laugh at us. The Big 12 isn’t just about the money; this is a transformative day that feels like a graduation. We’ve graduated and arrived. Today is a day that the UCF kingdom will remember forever.”
I would like to propose a toast to the UCF kingdom and everybody who helped build it.
Here’s to you, Knight Nation.
You’ve come a long way, baby, from that rainy, stormy day in 1979 when you played your first game in a cow pasture.
“Back then, getting into a major conference seemed like a million years and a million miles away,” said Brian Schmitz, the former Orlando Sentinel columnist who covered that very first UCF game. “It’s hard to believe UCF football has emerged from the mud and the muck of St. Leo.”
