Scott Frost: UCF ‘insulted’ by final playoff ranking

Scott Frost says he and his UCF team were “insulted” by the final College Football Playoff ranking, which had the Knights at No. 12.

Frost’s Knights earned the Group of 5 spot in a New Year’s Day bowl game by going 12-0 in the regular season, which led to them being the highest-ranked Group of 5 team in the CFP rankings. However, despite being undefeated, the Knights were not even close to the top four spots and got left out of the College Football Playoff.

“I didn’t want to talk about it during the season. But I understand the argument of whether or not UCF should have been in the championship, but I know a lot of people in our program, myself included, felt insulted by the rankings,” Frost said Saturday when accepting the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year Award, via CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd.

Frost even admitted he wasn’t necessarily arguing that UCF should be in the playoff, but rather that being ranked so low seemed like a specific effort to distance them from the playoff.

“I don’t know whether our team deserved to be in the playoff or not,” Scott continued. “To us, it appeared like it was a concerted effort to keep us a reasonable distance away from the top four to avoid controversy.”

Frost is in a position like many other coaches before him who complained about their team being left out of the title conversation amid an unbeaten season. Urban Meyer did it when he was at Utah; Chris Petersen at Boise State; and Gary Patterson at TCU. And guess what? All either moved to bigger programs like Frost is doing, or in Patterson’s case, the school moved conferences. To those guys, the system is only broken if it’s keeping their program out. Frost might think a little differently when he’s facing much tougher competition in the Big Ten at Nebraska. At least UCF rewarded him and his staff with some nice bonuses.