The No. 12 University of Central Florida Knights football team, after defeating the No. 7 Auburn Tigers, 34-27, in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, are planning to celebrate their “National Championship” with a parade in the Magic Kingdom on Sunday.
What are we going to do next? We’re going to Disney World!
The Knights finished the season a perfect 13-0, winning the American Athletic Conference Championship on their route to the Peach Bowl, finishing as high as 12th in the College Football Rankings.
The real college football national championship takes place next Monday between Alabama and Georgia, but due to UCF’s perfect season, the school president deemed them “National Champions”.
For those that aren’t sports fans, despite the fact that the Knights finished the season with a perfect record, the reason why they didn’t reach the actual national championship is because they don’t play in a strong conference for football.
Basically, all the teams ahead of them played in “power conferences” like the Big Ten and SEC, where the overall strength of the conference was tougher and each team played tough opponents on their schedule.
The Knights play in the AAC, a non-power conference, which knocked their resume down, but a perfect season is a perfect season, and this parade is much deserved.
The parade will take place at 4:30 PM in the Magic Kingdom on Sunday, with more celebrations planned around the Orlando area in the days before.
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Congratulations to UCF on a great season!! But… you are not the national champs. Sorry… A motivated UCF team beating an unmotivated AU team does not qualify as a Championship Win.
aww thats cute
I meant to add in that both the AD and the school president self-proclaimed the team as national champions. Despite the fact that many will think this is a crazy claim, there is one computer simulation that ranks the Knights as the No. 1 team in the nation. However, they and every other team in a non-Power 5 conference will never get the proper recognition they deserve simply because of the fact that they play in weaker conferences and most have easier schedules instead of teams in Power 5 conferences. Sorry for the sports factoids fellow WDWNT readers who don’t care about college football or who are clueless as to what most of this article is talking about.
Well, WDW has always been a place that people could step into a world of make believe/fantasy and live as such for the day. So, fitting for UCF!