Yeah, this is long and rambles some...
Again, I think too many people misunderstand our main points over the last two seasons. All we've been preaching is play the schedule put in front of you and win. Winning is hard. Winning away games even harder. Winning 23 in a row....insane for any program that has done it in the modern era (1990 or later in my book).
We have so many detractions thrown at us by pundits but once the season progresses, and we keep winning, the excuses just keep falling off the table. One of my favorites is SOS. Several weeks ago it was about how we didn't play anybody with a winning record. Now that we are going to play 5 teams with at least 7 wins before even getting to the Conference Championship game, that argument is garbage because we've played teams with better records than a lot of the current top ten teams. Then the pundits go back to the argument, "Well, those teams aren't from P5 conferences so the wins are just against garbage teams."
If you really break down P5 conferences they play weak OOC games, almost always at home, and if they have tough games they are usually neutral site, then play perennially garbage programs such as: Wake Forest, Duke, Virginia, Kansas, Rutgers, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Arizona, Oregon State, Vandy, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Miss St, etc.... Most of these programs have done absolutely nothing for the last 50 years. All you really have to do is be .500 in conference and you end up with 7-8 wins. I wouldn't say those are good teams at all. Those are average teams at best.
Miss State: Last conference title 1941
Ole Miss: Last conference title 1963
Tennessee: Last conference title 1998 (they did pay for three conference title in the 2000's but lost them all).
Kentucky: Last co-championship was 1976
Oregon State: Co-championship in 2000, then previous co-championship is 1964
etc....
These programs get paid to be garbage and lose to the Nebraska's, Penn State's, Ohio State's, Michigan's, Wisconsin's, etc... of the world. They are puppet programs whose only purpose, on the football field, is to act the part and lose to the teams deemed as "Worthy" (and I'm not saying they don't all deserve it because over the long-haul those teams have been constantly competitive at the top of their leagues). As one of the conference presidents, I'd be having major discussions with my programs as to what the hell you are doing with 30-40 million per year, because I see no progress on the field from any of these schools.
We (teams like UCF) only get rare chances to play and beat P5 schools. When you are in a division with, say Iowa, you get to play them every year, and every other year at home, so yeah, you will beat them from time to time but in the case of schools like ours we get one shot (rarely two although lately we are securing true home-and-home series and winning at a high rate) and all the pundits see the outcome and then say, see, they can't hang. For example, we played @Ohio State in 2012. We were good that year and got soundly beat at their place but we never got a return game at our place. Would have been nice to play them in 2013 at our house. We played @ Michigan in 2016 and got trounced but never got a return game @ UCF in 2017. Would have been fun to see how that panned out. The bar set for us is just so much higher than it seems for any P5 schools. How many other schools win @ Ohio State and @ Michigan....few and far between.
I mean, just look at Syracuse. They were #12 last week (right behind us) but why did they deserve that ranking? At the time they had beat: Western Michigan (6-4), Wagner, FSU (4-6), UConn (1-9), UNC (2-8), NC State (6-3), Wake Forest (5-5), and Loserville (2-8). They had lost to: Clemson (10-0) and Pitt (6-4). So am I to understand that by going 2-2 against teams with a record better than .500 (1-2 against conference opponents) that almost gets you a top 10 ranking late in the season? It's just purely ridiculous.
I (and everybody I hang out with) never argued that this team, as currently constituted and funded, could compete at the very top of several of the P5 conferences on day 1. It's just not fair to even do so. Anybody with any sense knows it'll take 2-3 season to get those better trench athletes in and coached up (especially the depth). Oh yeah, and don't forget even better recruits at all the other positions as well. We could easily compete, as is, at least above the middle of all the P5 conferences with our current resources. I think Heupel said it pretty much as good as can be said in his press conference after the Cincy game. To paraphrase, "Seeing this team do what it has done is quite astonishing, considering how young it is and the resources it has to work with. Most of the blue-blood programs established themselves in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. UCF is just now starting to establish itself and there is a lot of upside left. Man, is it awesome to be around while this kind of development is ongoing."
