Schedules for the 2015 college football season were released last week, and UCF head coach George O’Leary is less than thrilled with how things shook out for his team. The Knights are scheduled to play in only two non-Saturday games in 2015, and O’Leary isn’t happy about it.
UCF is scheduled to play on Saturday in each of its first 10 games, with its first non-Saturday contest not coming until late November. The Knights will finally get a pair of weeknight games in the last two weeks of the season: a Thursday night tilt with East Carolina and a Black Friday showdown with rival South Florida.
While this may not seem like a big deal, O’Leary is upset because this scheduling could limit the amount of national exposure his team gets throughout the course of the season. After all, for teams outside of Power Five conferences, weeknight games have become golden opportunities to showcase themselves before a national audience.
Just take a look at the brand the MAC has built for itself through these weeknight games. For many college football fans, Tuesday and Wednesday nights have become synonymous with MACtion, where high-scoring affairs and thrilling finishes have become the norm.
Meanwhile, other teams in Group of Five conferences, including the AAC, relish the opportunity to play in primetime on Thursday night, and of course UCF is no exception.
The Knights played in a total of five weeknight games during the 2014 season (three on Thursday, two on Friday), including a 31-24 overtime win against BYU in early October and an instant classic in their regular season finale with ECU. UCF defeated the Pirates 32-30 in that game, which many of you probably remember ended with a last-second Hail Mary.
Those are the kind of moments and games that teams like UCF live for, so it’s easy to understand O’Leary’s frustration over the fact that his squad will only get to play in two weeknight games in 2015. In fact, a total of six AAC teams are slated to appear in three non-Saturday games during the upcoming season: Cincinnati, ECU, Memphis, Houston, USF and UConn.
While it’s not a surprising to see teams like Cincinnati and Memphis on that list, it’s rather perplexing that USF and UConn, who combined to go 6-18 last year, are scheduled to play in more weeknight games than UCF.
Under O’Leary, the Knights are emerging as one of the premier programs outside the Power Five conferences. They’ve captured four conference titles during his tenure and won at least nine games in four of the past five seasons, plus they shocked the college football world when they upset Baylor in the 2014 Fiesta Bowl. So for teams like UConn and USF to be scheduled to play in more non-Saturday games than UCF seems downright laughable.
Of course, dates and times of games are subject to change, so this could all be a moot point by the time the season rolls around if UCF sees some changes to its schedule. But unless that happens, O’Leary has a legitimate gripe.
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