Jan. 29, 2012
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By Marc Daniels
UCFAthletics.com
ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFAthletics.com) - What is one to do about three hours before tipoff inside the UCF Arena before the Knights hit the court for another basketball game? You empty the mind of many thoughts. So here comes a bevy of information.
As January is about to become February, there's talk of Conference USA getting more than one big the NCAA Tournament. I am still not sure if that is possible because the top teams will likely beat each other up the rest of the way. But one issue the league still battles is exposure and respect. The top of C-USA is solid and can play with a lot of teams in the country. But the league still lacks national talk on highlight shows and the national college basketball writers refuse to recognize the depth among the conference. Southern Miss has a top-20 RPI and yet garnered a few votes in the coaches poll and no votes in the media poll last week. While television exposure is better in the new deal with FOX, the conference still struggles for better recognition for its performance. This is a shame because the conference is as deep as its been since UCF has been a member.
Navy will be on UCF's football schedule sometime in the future. The Midshipmen announced last week it will join the BIG EAST in 2015. The announcement drew yawns from national college football writers who took their shots via Twitter and in the blog world. But here is what they don't get, do you know how many states Navy has fans in? That would be all 50 as well as a few countries around the world. That matters to television networks. The BIG EAST and Navy agreed to allow Navy to honor its current television contracts as the transition takes place. Navy will also keep its game Army as the second Saturday in December. This means Navy could become the first school to play in a conference title game and then have a regular season game the following week.
Speaking of regular season games, UCF announced its schedule for 2012 and among the highlights is the game with Missouri at home. There had been speculation about a game with USF and how the Bulls wanted the game to be played at the Florida Citrus Bowl. Sorry, you don't build an on-campus stadium and then have a need for a sixth home game on your schedule and then agree to play a game in your city but not in your stadium. UCF and USF will play many games and unless it's a conference title game (which likely will not happen since both teams are expected to be in the same division in the BIG EAST) then all games should be played on each team's home field...
National Signing Day is Wednesday. I want UCF to get every great player the coaching staff has been recruiting. There will be plenty of so-called recruiting experts who will rank classes and tell everyone who will be an impact player and not. But after seeing how some recruiting services changed one or two star players to three star players after they publicly pledged their desire to attend UCF, not sure what their standing is on the credibility scale. Plus, I go back to Bruce Miller who was a two-star recruit. How did he turn out?
Knights notes and more: UCF baseball has earned a top 25 ranking in the respected Baseball American preseason poll. Terry Rooney's team kicked off workouts last week and the Knights were picked second in the C-USA preseason poll...Final thought: Opposing team's fan comment of the week comes from Tulsa where someone asked me how many students attend UCF. When I answered over 58,000 he then asked if that is the total number of students in the state system. When I explained that 58,000 attend UCF, he then said he was not asking me how many attend all state universities, just UCF. At that point, I made up something about having to get back to my broadcast location and do something.
Marc Daniels' From the Press Box runs several times per month on UCFAthletics.com. Listen to Marc during UCF football, men's basketball and baseball radio broadcasts on the UCF Sports Network. Each weekday, Marc hosts The Beat of Sports on ESPN Radio 1080 in Orlando.