The next week, MSU hopped UCF in the CFP rankings. On November 18, the Knights beat Temple (final S&P+ rank: 78th) by 26 points on the road, while Mississippi State beat Arkansas (final S&P+ rank: 91st) by seven on the road. Three weeks after the initial CFP rankings came out, UCF stood at only 15th in the rankings, behind eight two-loss power-conference teams. My in-the-moment grievance came from an unlikely source: Mississippi State. The fact that UCF was denied a spot in the top four was an after-the-fact grievance. Winning that game would have struck a symbolic blow even stronger than UCF’s eventual Peach Bowl win over Auburn, a team that had defeated both national title game participants (Bama and UGA). The Knights finished ahead of them in S&P+, after all.
Plus, a fourth-seeded UCF team could very well have beaten top-seeded Clemson. It would have set an aggressive precedent for mid-majors that college football should be willing to consider. I wouldn’t have complained had they gotten a bid, mind you.
But only four teams make the CFP, and Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Clemson were all awesome - three of the four finished ahead of UCF in the year-end S&P+ rankings, and the one that didn’t (Clemson) was the CFP’s top seed. The Knights were, on paper, a top-10 team and spent most of the first half of the season playing at a top-five level. In the end, I was okay with UCF not getting a Playoff semifinal bid in 2017. Their game against FAU on September 20 could very well determine the G5’s dominant team for 2018.