In the end, after an interception in the final 20 seconds of the Fiesta Bowl sealed the 40-32 win for LSU on Tuesday, the Tigers mocked their opponents from Central Florida.
Grinning LSU defensive back Eric Monroe was foremost among them, holding aloft for all to see a white board with “National Champs…LOL!!!” scrawled on it.
The Tigers could laugh now. But for two seasons, a span during which the Knights won 25 consecutive games, the most in the 129-member Football Bowl Subdivision, and demanded a piece of the 2017 national championship, UCF was no laughing matter to the well-heeled elite of college athletics.
The simple economics of the widening divide between the haves and have-nots of college football, not to mention Las Vegas oddsmakers who had pegged LSU as an eight-point favorite, said UCF’s streak was living on borrowed time. But darned if it wasn’t a refreshing and inspiring insurrection while it lasted.
You didn’t even have to know exactly where in central Florida the UCF campus was located to appreciate the upstart Knights’ accomplishments or savor the level of consternation their lengthening win streak spread among the Power Five conference members.
Here, 5,000 miles distant, it wasn’t necessary to know Hawaii’s prime connection to UCF’s rise to fame or appreciate what was taking place. But it helped.
What started out as a cute story of a program rebounding from an 0-12 finish two years earlier to 13-0 in 2017, was on the verge of becoming a horror story for the big boys, and Mililani High graduate as quarterback McKenzie Milton was the triggerman on 23 of those victories.
More than that, he was a gritty, inspirational leader throwing touchdowns and barking right back at those who he felt weren’t giving the Knights their due.
Unlike the upstarts in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to which they were often compared initially, the Knights weren’t content to be a one-month-and-gone Cinderella.
Unlike Loyola-Chicago, which had its memorable hoops run and the nun, Sister Jean, everybody loved, the Knights developed an aggressive, unrepentant edge that chafed many, including Alabama’s Nick Saban.
The UCF administration went all in on claiming a piece of the 2017 season national championship. They held a parade, painted the claim on their stadium, handed out championship rings and displayed it on the side of campus police cars.
As much as the movers and shakers behind the College Football Playoff tried to ignore them, the Knights kept mugging for the cameras, growling into microphones and agitating for change. If there wasn’t a place in the CFP them, they vowed to keep raising a din until their voice could be heard.
Had Milton, a two-time top-10 finisher in Heisman Trophy voting, not suffered the gruesome season-ending knee injury in November, perhaps the Knights’ protests might still be unquelled. We’ll never know but will long wonder. Of course, LSU was without some key players, too, Tuesday, which would only have deepened the debate.
The sad thing now isn’t just that the Knights’ remarkable run has ended before a foothold could be extended on the first day of 2019. It is also that, given the growing stratification taking place in the FBS, it might be a long time before there is somebody to take up the crusade to the degree it was pressed by UCF.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
