Why would anybody let this rivalry end?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Do you see what it took for UCF to beat 1-win USF on Saturday night?
It took two miraculous catches – one by Javon Baker for 41 yards to set up the winning score and another amazing one-handed, falling-backward grab by tight end Alec Holler for the game-winning, season-saving touchdown with 20 seconds left.
UCF 46, USF 39.
Wow.
What a game.
What a night.
What a rivalry.
But, sadly, unless something is done about it, the “War of I-4″ rivalry is now “War That Is No More.” This was the last game between these two teams for the foreseeable future.
For the UCF Knights, it ended historically and euphorically on a surreal Saturday night with a sixth straight victory over the Bulls, but one that didn’t come nearly as easy as it should have been.
And it ended with the Knights celebrating their present and their future. The win advances UCF to next week’s American Athletic Conference Championship Game at Tulane with the opportunity to go to the Cotton Bowl. And then, UCF will sail away to bigger and better things in the Big 12.
For USF, its miserable season at least ended with a prideful performance against a rival. The Bulls were down 28-0 early in the game, but came storming back to take a 39-38 lead on a 42-yard touchdown run by quarterback Byrum Brown with seven minutes left.
It appeared we were on the verge of a sequel to the famous Florida-Florida State “Choke at Doak.” Except this one would have been called “Up In Flames at Raymond James.”
Because “up in flames” is exactly what would have happened to UCF’s season if they had blown the 28–point lead and lost to a 1-11 USF team playing with a true freshman quarterback in his first home start.
UCF coach Gus Malzahn would have never heard the end of it if his team had finished the season by losing two straight games to teams (Navy and USF) with a combined 4-17 record.
But UCF somehow, someway regrouped enough on their final drive to overcome three second-half fumbles and starting quarterback John Rhys Plumlee leaving the game with an apparent tweaked hamstring at the end of the first half. Plumlee was shredding USF’s defense on the ground and through the air. He completed all nine of his passes for 73 yards and a TD and ran 8 times for 133 yards and 2 touchdowns, including a 64-yard sprint to the end zone.
Backup quarterback Mikey Keene played the entire second half and was mostly ineffective until it mattered most; when he hit the diving Baker for 41 yards and then Holler, whose one-handed grab of the 14-yard TD will go down as one of the greatest catches in UCF history.
“Those were two wow catches,” Malzahn said. “To win a championship, to go play for a championship, those are the kind of plays you have to make.”
Even so, Malzahn, his coaches, UCF fans and players were sweating bigtime until USF’s final Hail Mary fell incomplete in the back of the end zone.
Games and performances like this are why this rivalry should never die.
As UCF moves up to the Big 12 next season, Saturday’s game between the Knights and the Bulls was the last in the series between the two schools for what may be a long time. Unlike last time this series ended amid USF’s institutional arrogance, this time it’s not really anybody’s fault. It’s just the way college football scheduling works.
Because UCF-USF will be in different conferences and because non-conference schedules are booked years in advance, they cannot seem to fit each other in for several years. USF athletic director Michael Kelly has told the Sentinel that the Bulls’ non-conference slate is booked through 2028, which means it will seemingly be at least six more years before the two schools play again.
“We can’t get them to cancel games, but we’ll definitely want to play them,” UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir said when he was asked about the series several months ago. “They [USF] are scheduled out. It’s not like basketball. You schedule four or five years or six years out in football. We’re scheduling in the 2030s right now to get games and that’s kind of where we are in the college football landscape.”
Can somebody please change the landscape?
This is my plea to Mohajir and Kelly: Do something – anything! – to save this rivalry. Do whatever you have to do – finagle your schedule, cancel other non-conference games, play a neutral site game in freaking Lakeland if you have to – just don’t let this rivalry and revelry die.
I’m not trying to tell Kelly how to do his job, but if I were him I would be doing everything in my power to move things around to make room for UCF. Let’s be honest, the Bulls now need this series more than UCF. The Knights will have plenty of marquee matchups once they move to the Big 12, but USF is in desperate need of games that will fire up its dwindling, downtrodden fan base. Those games will be hard to come by in a restructured American that is adding teams such as – yawn – UAB, FAU, North Texas, Texas-San Antonio (another yawn), Rice and UNC-Charlotte.
In other words, USF is now in the same predicament UCF was in more than a decade ago. That’s why there are some UCF fans who are still understandably bitter about how USF haughtily ended the rivalry in 2008 when the Bulls had moved up to the Big East and left UCF behind in Conference USA. USF’s arrogance back then was inexcusable and, hopefully, UCF will never be so shortsighted.
Even though UCF is moving up in weight classification, the Knights still need an in-state rival. In fact, I think every college football team should have an in-state rival or at least a neighboring state rival. After all, college football was built on the passion and pageantry of geographic rivalries.
Yes, UCF will have more important games against more quality opponents in the Big 12, but it still won’t have a rival like USF. Every college football team should have a “hate game” – a game where the fans and the players know each other, talk trash to each other and, quite frankly, need each other to make the college football season as fun and frolicking as it can possibly be.
I mean, did you see how Florida State fans reacted to their thrilling, chilling 45-38 win over Florida on Friday night? Even though it was a victory against a six-win Florida team that had just lost to Vanderbilt last week, they stormed the field to celebrate the end of a three-game losing streak to UF.
Guess what?
If UCF had been at home, I’m not so sure their fans wouldn’t have stormed the field after holding on to beat USF.
“This was one of those special games,” Malzahn said.
Please, I beg you, Terry Mohajir and Michael Kelly.
After what we just witnessed on this amazing, hair-raising Saturday night, let the War on I-4 continue to roar.
