College Football Playoff Executive Director Defends UCF's Ranking
No. 10 UCF finished the season with a 13–0 record and the only undefeated FBS team after a 34-27 Peach Bowl win over No. 7 Auburn but College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock defended the Knights' rankings throughout the season.
UCF was never ranked higher than 10th by the playoff committee, which is comprised of 13 current and former coaches, athletic directors and administrators.
"The selection committee respected UCF," Hancock told ESPN. "After all, they're the group that put the Knights in the Peach Bowl. To qualify for the playoff, teams need to play tough schedules against good teams -- that is the way for all teams to stand out and be ranked high by the committee. UCF is an excellent team, but you still have to take into account who each team played and defeated during the regular season."
"The committee starts all over every year and takes a fresh approach every season," he added. "It wouldn't be right for what's happened in the past to affect what happens this year. The committee respected UCF. They were ranked higher than any other team from that group. UCF was unfortunate not to be able to play Georgia Tech. You can what-if all day, but that certainly would've changed UCF's resume for sure. Every game changes every resume. That certainly wasn't their fault. They had a great season."
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Knights head coach Scott Frost, who is leaving to coach at Nebraska, still believes that it was an unfair process to select the semifinalists for the College Football Playoff.
“It looked like a conscious effort to me to make sure that they didn’t have a problem if they put us too high and a couple teams ahead of us lost," Frost said. "And oh, no, now we have to put them in a playoff? But we just beat [Auburn] that beat two playoff teams and lost to another one by six points, and we beat them by seven.”
UCF played just one ranked opponent all season with a win over No. 20 Memphis in the American Athletic Conference title game. The Knights may have also been hurt by the cancellation the game against Georgia Tech due to Hurricane Irma.
