It’s a big week for the UCF Knights as they look towards an American Athletic Conference championship. The only thing standing in their way is Memphis.
On Thursday Black & Gold Banneret’s Jeff Sharon joined the Erik Kuselias Show to talk about the highly-anticipated game and where the Knights fall in the AP poll.
“They’re (UCF) two spots below where they should be,” Sharon remarked. “UCF has been playing the disrespect card from the College Football Playoff Committee for quite a few weeks now regarding not being moved up and most of all being leapfrogged by teams that have two and sometimes three losses.”
The Knights are ranked 12 in the AP poll this week, behind teams like USC, TCU, and Penn State, all of which have two losses. This came as a surprise to a lot of UCF people who believed Central Florida should be close if not in the top ten following their win over USF.
“It just feels like the committee is sandbagging UCF because they’re not in a Power Five conference,” said Sharon.
The blow comes just before UCF looks towards one of their biggest games of the year (after the USF rival game). Memphis and UCF met earlier in the year, and the Knights came away victorious but leave no doubt this game will be a tough fight. The meeting is the only loss for the Tigers and was their lowest point total of the year.
“Since then they’ve (Memphis) dropped 70 (points) on two opponents and 66 on one other and all of those opponents are in the conference,” said Sharon.
Memphis has the second-best scoring offense in the country just behind UCF, and quarterback Riley Ferguson is starting to set in as a highly-scouted quarterback, which has Sharon worried.
Adding to the worry is whether UCF head coach Scott Frost will be heading north to Nebraska or not. So far it’s unclear whether the Big Ten school has offered Frost the job yet or not.
“I think right now it’s more than 50/50 that he is going to go to Nebraska at this point,” said Sharon.
The Knights takes on Memphis in the AAC Championship game at noon on Saturday at Spectrum Stadium in Orlando, FL. The game will be aired on ABC.
