In today’s Fact or Fiction, I look at three big recent topics in college football and decide whether the statement is indeed FACT or if it’s FICTION.
1. UCF won a natty in 2017.
Farrell’s take: FICTION
This came up again in a debate on Twitter. A case was being made by UCF head coach Gus Malzahn about UCF being in the “big four” in Florida based on recent success. I responded with the records of each team over the last six years where UCF has a huge advantage. The records since 2017 are as follows…
- UCF 59-19
- Gators 45-30
- Canes 43-31
- Noles 36-36
And then of course came the claims of a national title in 2017 by the UCF fans. That’s the year they went 13-0 and their best win was over No. 10 Auburn in the Peach Bowl, the team that beat eventual national champion Alabama in the Iron Bowl. It’s the old “we beat the team that beat the team” argument and it rings false. Alabama beat No. 4 Clemson and No. 2 Georgia in the playoff to win it all while UCF went undefeated in the AAC. That’s not gonna cut it for me. Whether the NCAA or media outlets allow a “claim” of a national title or not, the college football playoff was set up for the top four teams in the country to compete for it all. And UCF wasn’t invited.
2. Reducing transfer portal windows will help.
Farrell’s take: FICTION
This isn’t the answer. In fact, creating the windows in the first place was a horrible idea. Making a 45-day window in the winter and a 15-day window in the spring was dumb and it puts undue stress on college coaches, especially in the winter when they are also juggling bowl coaching, recruiting, roster management, and other factors. So what now? The proposal is to make it 30 days overall which I assume means 15 in the winter and 15 in the spring. That will just add to the chaos. A shorter window in December will lead to even more tampering before it opens up and more of a signing frenzy than 45 days. The solution? Go back to the 365-day window. Let them enter whenever they want and it will spread the calendar back out and make things manageable again.
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3. The NLI changes are good ones.
Farrell’s take: FICTION
They’re stupid. Why? Because the National Letter of Intent is stupid. And outdated. It’s essentially been a contract since 1964 between student and college binding the player to a one-year agreement and binding the school to a one-year scholarship. And it’s been outdated forever. Players can easily get out of NLIs, it’s always been beyond rare for a school to not honor an NLI for the full course of an athlete’s career/enrollment, and players can still enroll and earn a scholarship without one. It’s a piece of paper that’s been irrelevant for years and now is completely worthless with the transfer portal and other factors. So now players can get out of an NLI if there is a coaching change and don’t have to stay the full two semesters? That’s kinda how it’s been already. I’m confused how people are in charge of working on things like this when it’s already been established as changed.
