Saturday, December 01, 2007

Conference USA Champions!

University of Central Florida 44, University of Tulsa 25

UCF hosted the C-USA Championship game today at noon for the second time in the three years they have been playing in that conference. The other appearance was in 2005, also against Tulsa, which they lost.

The win gives UCF their first conference championship title in their football program's history. It also guarantees an invitation to the Liberty Bowl, to be held in Memphis on December 29. It is the second bowl game for the Knights.

Four and a half years ago they fired their coach mid-season. Four years ago they started a new program under former Georgia Tech head coach George O'Leary. In 2004 they did not win a single game. In 2005 they won the divisional title in the C-USA and went to the first bowl game in the school's history. Under Caoch O'Leary's guidance, they have built an indoor practice facility on campus, and this Fall they opened the on-campus stadium, ending over 25 years of driving 15 miles to downtown Orlando to play their games in the Citrus Bowl.

UCF is a program establishing itself as the 5th football power in the state of Florida, standing tall along side of perennial powerhouses like Florida, Florida State, and Miami, and joining newcomer USF in making headlines.

I am proud of UCF as my alma mater.

3 comments:

Sparky Duck said...

Bravo to your boys

Its funny, both our schools are going to bowls. You are excited as hell, and I can barely stomach watching more Oregon mishaps

Valtool said...

I agree. We have only one thing to be ashamed of this year, our loss to East Carolina.

We had three losses. The first was to Texas, who we played at home in our first on-campus game. We lost that game by 3 points after leading in the 4th quarter.

Our other "acceptable" loss was to South Florida. We played them at the height of their season, when they were steamrolling every team they encountered. It would be nice if we could beat them, as they are the closest competitive college team to our campus. We have played them three times and lost all three.

East Carolina was a mess. We had 5 third-quarter turnovers and lost a game by 14 or so points, the same we should have won it by.

I've never been to see a college bowl game. I want to go to Memphis for this one. My wife has a lot of college friends in the area, so there's appeal for her to want to go as well.

Now, to wait out the next nine and a half hours to find out who we play.

retrodaddy said...

Who woulda thought a lie on one man's resume would bring such great fortune to UCF?

Congrats to UCF. They've had a pretty damn good year. Smith is fun to watch, and if UCF returns most of its O-line, Smith should have another monster year in '08.

Go to the bowl game, man.