I think that they deserve to be in the playoff if they take care of business this weekend.” “I’ve been pleased to see that there’s been progress for them to get in the top four,” White said. White now sits in an SEC chair, but has been happy to see Cincinnati of the AAC push its way into unprecedented heights for a team outside the power conferences. 12 in the CFP rankings and undefeated again in 2018 and finished No. He was UCF’s athletic director when the Knights finished undefeated in 2017 and ended up No. One administrator who has watched with interest is Tennessee athletic director Danny White. What good would it do to complain about it? Who knows what TCU could be right now if we’d been allowed to play in the playoff?” “They’re going to have to justify that a lot better than what they did last time. “There is a precedent,” Patterson said of the committee’s decision to drop a team from the Top 4. 5 Oklahoma State wins the Big 12 championship over No. That scenario is especially viable if No. He still wonders what could have been if they hadn’t dropped out of the Top 4 in the final rankings: “Sometimes, that changes history.”Įven if it is undefeated, Cincinnati could face that same fate. 3 and beat Iowa State 55-3 to finish 11-1. They entered the final weekend ranked No. The necessity to be perfect is compounded by the reality that perfect may not be enough for the Bearcats.įormer TCU coach Gary Patterson is still stung by the Horned Frogs, who were in the Big 12 at the time, getting left out of the 2014 CFP.
(Katie Stratman/USA TODAY Sports) Remember what happened to TCU and UCF? “There’s just no margin for error.”Ī convincing win Saturday for Luke Fickell and Cincinnati won't guarantee the Bearcats a ticket in the CFP. “There’s no such thing as perfect in football, but basically they’re having to do that,” said Chris Petersen, who can relate from his run at Boise State from 2006-13. And those who’ve attempted to upend the establishment have an appreciation for what Bearcats head coach Luke Fickell and his team are doing. Cincinnati’s season has seized the attention of the sport’s prior underdog coaches and those who’ve broken glass ceilings in different sports.
Since college football began streamlining its system to play for a national title in 1998 with the Bowl Championship Series, no team from outside a power league has made a more compelling run at the title than the Bearcats. The Bearcats enter the weekend as 10.5-point favorites against Houston to win the American Athletic Conference championship, finish the season 13-0 and become the first team outside of a major conference to earn an opportunity to play for the national title. 4 in the College Football Playoff rankings, one of the most compelling stories in the sport's history. While those stories have been compelling and endearing, those schools from small leagues fell short of truly getting an opportunity to compete for the national title. But the underdogs in college football have struggled to find the same lore and allure as a sport like college basketball, in part because the system hasn’t allowed them to play at the highest level. College football programs from smaller conferences have made cloudbursts onto the national scene, as runs by schools like Tulane (1998), Utah (20) and Boise State (20) captured the country's imagination.
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