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Inside UCF’s rise from D-III to Big 12 and what’s next: ‘This could be the premier place’
Chris Vannini
Jul. 12, 2023
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ORLANDO — As the clock struck midnight, UCF supporters popped champagne. School leaders and donors gathered at a party highlighted by a special limited edition UCF-branded beverage. Elsewhere, fans held their own celebrations on various livestreams and social media.
When the calendar moved to July 1, UCF joined the Big 12, capping an unprecedented journey and becoming the youngest Power 5 conference football program by more than three decades, having begun play in 1979. (The next youngest is Florida State, which began in 1947.) UCF is the only program to play in every classification or grouping of NCAA football: Division III, Division II, Football Championship Subdivision, Group of 5, Power 5.
After fighting for respect and stringing together on-field accomplishments that demanded it, the school finally has a seat at college football’s big table.
“Conference realignment and aspiration to reach the highest level of college football has been something we UCF fans have discussed and obsessed about for 20-plus years,” said Brandon Helwig, who started a UCF fan site in the 1990s and now runs UCFSports.com, a Rivals site.
With the second-largest undergraduate enrollment in the country (more than 65,000 students), a growing alumni base and new facility plans in the works, UCF has branded itself “The future of college football.” It recently sold out of football season tickets for the fourth time in five years. The Knights are tied for the Big 12 lead with five four-star football commits in the class of 2024, per the 247Sports Composite. The ball is rolling.
“We can win conference and national championships in every sport,” athletic director Terry Mohajir said. “You see and feel the excitement, but more importantly, you see top student-athletes looking to UCF as their top choice now.”
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Orlando, long considered a city of transplants and tourists, has evolved into a UCF-friendly town for both the locals and the newcomers. And in a local sports scene without an NFL, MLB or NHL franchise, the Knights are poised to build on that.
“Getting an MLS team was big, but I think UCF getting in the Big 12 is even bigger,” said Mike Bianchi, an Orlando radio host and columnist since 2000. “It’s still a college football town. … (The Magic) getting Shaq and playing in the NBA Finals was bigger, but in the last decade, this is No. 1.”
Florida Technical University, founded in 1963 with its first classes held in 1968, was created to educate personnel for the nearby Kennedy Space Center. It was renamed the University of Central Florida in 1978 and quickly grew into a broad-based educational school, popular with commuter students in a growing city.
Today, 30 percent of Kennedy Space Center employees are UCF graduates, and launches can be seen from many spots on campus. The 50-yard line at FBC Mortgage Stadium lines up directly with the launch pad. UCF fans take to the internet to staunchly defend and highlight that history with each annual release of space-themed football uniforms to be worn that season.
Former president Trevor Colbourn felt athletics would be an important avenue to raise the profile of the school and spoke of creating a football program in his 1979 inaugural address. Athletic director Jack O’Leary made himself head coach and hired six graduate students as volunteer assistants. O’Leary wanted the team to look like Notre Dame, so he introduced a uniform of gold pants, black jerseys and gold helmets. O’Leary then hired former Penn State running back Don Jonas as the actual head coach.
In August 1979, the first group of players had to bring their own cleats and pay $14 per day to stay in the dorms. The “Fighting Knights” went 6-2 in their first Division III season and moved up to Division II three years later. By 1990, UCF had moved up to Division I-AA (now FCS).
Current offensive coordinator Darin Hinshaw witnessed the climb firsthand. As a standout high school quarterback in the early 1990s, Hinshaw was recruited by several Division I-A schools. Duke, North Carolina and Georgia Tech wanted him. His grades were terrific. When Duke head coach Steve Spurrier got the Florida job, Hinshaw thought he’d found the perfect in to play for his home-state Gators. But Spurrier took Terry Dean, a high school rival. Longtime UCF head coach Gene McDowell had kept recruiting Hinshaw, so the quarterback decided to take a visit.
“(McDowell) told me you can start for four years, change a program and take us into Division I,” said Hinshaw. “Everything he said, I felt. It felt like, from God, this is the place for me. Sure enough, everything they said came true. I started for four years, broke every school record there was.”
After Hinshaw came Daunte Culpepper, who immediately broke all of his predecessor’s records as UCF moved up to I-A (now FBS). The program had footing and momentum. It beat Alabama in 2000 on a last-second field goal. Former president John Hitt, who led the school from 1992 to 2018, embarked on a massive expansion of education and athletics. UCF opened the first college football indoor practice facility in Florida in 2005 and built an on-campus stadium in 2007, nearly upsetting Colt McCoy and No. 6 Texas in the stadium-opener.
The infrastructure was in place, but UCF was still second fiddle in its own town to Florida, Florida State and sometimes Miami. It was still somewhat of a commuter school to many students. Meanwhile in Tampa, USF, an even younger football program, was a power-conference team in the Big East, reaching No. 2 in the polls in 2007.
“UCF fans for years hated if a game went head-to-head with the Florida-Florida State game because attendance would be terrible, minimal student support,” Helwig said.
Still, UCF kept building. The program reached a new high in the 2013 season. Led by quarterback Blake Bortles, the Knights went 12-1 and beat Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl.
But UCF had returned 10,000 of its allotted 17,500 tickets for that bowl. Momentum evaporated quickly thereafter, as the Knights went 0-12 in 2015 and fired head coach George O’Leary. People around college football felt the UCF program had all the tools in place and all the potential anyone would want, smack dab in the middle of Florida. It should be better.
An unprecedented turnaround would come at the perfect time.
To McKenzie Milton, UCF football players never viewed themselves as the underdog. When the quarterback arrived in 2016 with new head coach Scott Frost, Milton realized he’d walked into a situation that was a whole lot better than 0-12.
“There was a bunch of talent on that roster and Coach Frost was the perfect catalyst to make a 180 in shifting the culture,” said Milton, who now coaches at Tennessee. “It was the perfect storm.”
In two years, Frost and Milton took UCF from winless to an undefeated regular season and an AAC crown in 2017. The Knights, shunned by the College Football Playoff, went to the Peach Bowl to play Auburn, which had ended the regular season ranked No. 2 in the country.
This time, UCF sold out its ticket allotment in three days, then sold more tickets. It beat Auburn 34-27 and left an impression on Tigers head coach Gus Malzahn.
“It was electric. Like, wow, that is a real program,” Malzahn recounted recently. “They have really good players. The fan base was like, whoa. That got my attention.”
Amid the on-field celebration, athletic director Danny White said UCF would declare itself national champions. The Knights were the only undefeated team in the FBS and beat Auburn, which had beaten CFP winner Alabama and runner-up Georgia during the regular season. Few people took it all that seriously, but when UCF finished No. 1 in the Colley Matrix computer program, it became an official NCAA-recognized national championship.
Outsiders scoffed at the notion. UCF leaned into it and later put it on the stadium press box alongside the conference championships. The UCF online fan army went after anyone who declared CFP champion Alabama as the real national champ.
In that period, UCF finally became Orlando’s team. A championship parade was held at Disney World. Ticket sales exploded. The UCF-branded Florida license plate became an offbeat point of pride among fans. As UCF’s campus grew, it shed the image of a commuter school. It didn’t have a century of tradition, but it was creating new ones.
In December 2021, UCF matched up with Florida in the Gasparilla Bowl. It didn’t matter that the Gators were 6-6. To UCF fans, it felt like another New Year’s Six game. The game was a sellout, with more than 63,000 fans at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium. UCF’s 29-17 win, its first ever against the Gators, was another milestone to cross off the list, another opportunity to say they belonged.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Milton said.
UCF’s journey to this moment was an incredibly quick one in the context of college football history, but it’s a moment that the school willed into existence. The Knights refused to settle, demanded more and now are here to take whatever they can.
“This is what the future looks like,” Malzahn said. “Having been here for a little over two years, I believe it even more. It’s set up to win championships. … We graduate 20,000 students a year. It’s all set up.
“If we could fast forward a year or two, this could be the premier place.”
