59 Days Until Kansas Football: Big 12 Expansion Primer – UCF

With the news of the past week of USC and UCLA heading to the Big Ten, conference realignment is again in full swing. Who knows what the next months and year will bring.

But for now, we’re rounding out our primer series on the new programs we know will be in the Big 12 in 2023. It’s time to take a look at The University of Central Florida.

And if you missed any of the other primers, catch up on Houston, Cincinnati, and BYU.

University Overview

Location: Orlando, Florida

School type: Public

Year founded: 1963

Undergrad enrollment: 61,456

Football History

Compared to most schools in the conference, UCF is the youngster (as Roy Williams would say) of the bunch. Its first year of football was in 1979 at the DIII level. Three years later, it moved up to DII. And then in 1990, UCF became a DI-AA program, becoming the first team to make the playoffs in its inaugural year in I-AA. The final move came in 1996 when it finished its ascent into the FBS.

Even in FBS, UCF has been on the move, spending time as an independent and in the MAC, Conference USA, and AAC. It has also continued its run of success on the field. UCF has compiled a 183-135 record in FBS while winning six conference championships and making 13 bowl games in 26 years.

The most famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) year was 2017, when UCF went 13-0 and finished ranked 6th in the final AP poll after beating Auburn in the Peach Bowl. The university claimed a national championship—hosting a parade and hanging a banner in addition to outright saying it—as the only undefeated team in the sport that year. In 2018, the NCAA record book officially recognized the Knights as co-champions along with Alabama, who won the College Football Playoff, due to the fact that the Colley Matrix had UCF as the champion in its final poll.

Football in 2022

Leading the Knights in his second year is former Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn, who went 9-4 with UCF last year and finished third in the American (behind only fellow Big 12 newcomers. Cincinnati and Houston). It was one of the programs’ worst offensive years in terms of points per game in recent history, but that’s only because the Knights have been elite since 2017. UCF averaged 31.9 ppg in 2021 and it was the first time since 2016 that the Knights didn’t average at least 40 ppg in a season.

To fix that, Malzahn brought in former Ole Miss quarterback John Rhys Plumlee, a dual-threat QB who lost out to Matt Corral but has 4.4 speed. He’ll compete with Mike Keene, who went 7-3 last year after Dillon Gabriel suffered an injury in September.

The offense is returning a lot of rushing depth, but is mixing things up at receiver. Six receivers from last year either transferred or exhausted their eligibility, but Malzahn combated that by bringing in Auburn’s top receiver from last year, Kobe Hudson.

The defense made up for where the offense regressed in 2021, improving from giving up 33.2 ppg in 2020 to only 24.5 ppg last year. And this year, nine players who started in at least six games in 2021 will be back, including six in the secondary.

And UCF is already recruiting in line with a power-five team. Manny Navarro of The Athletic pointed out that “The Knights’ average class during the past four years was 63rd according to the 247Sports Composite, placing them third in the AAC behind Cincinnati and Memphis. If you were to compare UCF with their future Big 12 rivals, they would be seventh in the league behind Baylor (36th), West Virginia (37th), Iowa State (46th), Cincinnati (49th), Texas Tech (59th) and Kansas State (60th).”

Why they were chosen

UCF may be new and used to playing the underdog in athletics, but it is a Goliath in terms of its size. There are a few numbers floating out there, but UCF listed its fall 2021 enrollment as 70,406 including undergrad and graduate programs. That makes it the largest university in Florida and one of the top schools in the nation in size. UCF, Liberty, and Texas A&M are at the top in pretty much every list, well ahead of some of the Big Ten giants like Ohio State (approx. 61,000 students).

For comparison, Texas is the largest current Big 12 school at 50,000 students, and next up is Texas Tech at 40,000. This arms UCF with a massive fan base, as well as a top-20 market size. And since UCF contains 10 campuses across the middle of the state, it’s not just Orlando itself that is going to have a more vested interest in the Big 12.

Florida is a football hotbed, and the ability to sell Big 12 football should help in recruiting the state. 

Join the discussion! Come talk about this or any of our articles on the Blue Wing Rising Discord Server.

Follow Blue Wings Rising on Twitter.

Listen to the official podcast of Blue Wings Rising: The Rock Chalk Podcast.