Kirk Herbstreit made comments against UCF. Knights AD Danny White responded.
During the weekly “College GameDay” Saturday broadcast on ESPN, analyst Kirk Herbstreit mentioned multiple Group of Five teams better than UCF and didn’t say anything favorable about the Knights belonging in the College Football Playoff picture.
“Why are we focusing on just UCF when it comes to the Power 5 because I think there are other teams out there that are as deserving or more deserving?” Herbstreit said during Saturday’s telecast.
“You need to play somebody in order to be rewarded. UCF, you need to not just be worried about being undefeated and trying to get in the top four, you need to look behind you at teams like Utah State, Appalachian State, Fresno State. These teams, on paper, which is what you want to look at a lot of times, are better than UCF and more deserving than UCF.”
Those comments naturally drew the ire of UCF fans, but also saw a response from UCF athletic director Danny White, who posted a letter he penned to Twitter.
“College football has become a subjective popularity contest,” a portion of White’s letter reads. “The Knights represent all of the teams who — for reasons of history, geography or politics — are left out of the club. These factors will not define our bright future. Our student-athletes don’t want anything given to them ... they just want a chance.”
The letter, addressed to the GameDay Crew, ends by asking “to work with you as partners to fix a broken model,” since the American Athletic Conference partners with ESPN.
The tweet containing the letter drew more than 6,700 likes, 2,500 retweets and 500 comments. Fans voiced their opinions on social media, too:
UCF head coach Josh Heupel also weighed in on Herbstreit’s comments, appearing on the Orlando-based radio show, “Open Mike,” on 96.9 FM.
“I’m not sure Kirk’s real happy with our fan base,” Heupel said on the show. “He expressed that earlier at our conference meetings. He got hammered pretty good during the offseason. At the end of the day, we’re going to control what we can control and continue to go play ball. Go 1-0 every week and try to take care of our business.”
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