The Knights are heading to the NCAA Super Regional for the first time since 2022 and just the second time in program history thanks to a gutsy performance in the NCAA Tallahassee Regional.

With UCF’s 4-2 victory over No. 9-seeded Florida State on the Seminoles’ home field on Sunday, the Knights will now face UCLA for a chance to advance to the Women’s College World Series for the first time.

The softball team is the eighth UCF program to compete at an NCAA postseason regional or championship event in 2025-26, joining �����’s�����Ի���wo�����’s soccer, indoor track & field,�������’s basketball,�������’s and wo�����’s tennis and women’s golf.

Resiliency in NCAA Regional

The Knights scored their sixth-consecutive berth to the NCAA Tournament and were tabbed as the No. 6 seed in the Tallahassee Regional, kicking off postseason play against Jacksonville State on Friday.

Down to the last out of the opening game and trailing 1-0, sophomore catcher and health sciences major Beth Damon came through with one of the biggest hits of her career, sending in the tying run to force extra innings where UCF ultimately prevailed for a 2-1 walk-off victory.

After a 10-1 win over Stetson on Saturday, the Knights advanced to championship Sunday against the Seminoles. UCF fell 2-1 to Florida State in the first game, forcing an immediate winner-take-all matchup in the double-elimination tournament.

After the Seminoles tied game 2 in the top of the fourth, sophomore utility player and pre-integrated business major Izzy Mertes responded for the Knights with a two-run home run to give UCF all it needed for the victory.

“It took every ounce of us to be able to get to this point, and I’m so proud of the fight that they had,” says head coach Cindy Ball Malone. “It is very difficult to play here, and I’m so proud of the resilience of our team to stay together and fight.”

The win, UCF’s first over Florida State since April 6, 2011, represented the sixth over the Seminoles in program history, third over Florida State in Tallahassee, and the Knights’ first in NCAA Tournament play.

NCAA Super Regionals Info

UCF is one of two Florida schools remaining in the tournament. The Knights will travel to No. 8-seed UCLA from May 22-24.

The Bruins boast a 50-8 record this season and are coming off of back-to-back victories over South Carolina in which they outscored the Gamecocks 22-3.

Game 1 of the Best-of-3 series will take place on Friday, May 22, at 9 p.m. ET and will be televised on ESPNU. Game 2 is scheduled for Saturday, May 23, at 9 p.m. ET and will air on ESPN.

If necessary, game 3 would take place on Sunday, May 24 at a time to be determined.

UCF’s Road to the NCAA Tournament

This year marks UCF’s 13th all-time appearance in the premiere postseason tournament.

UCF is one of seven Big 12 Conference teams selected to the tournament after producing a dominant regular season with 38 wins. Along the way, the Knights notched three victories over opponents ranked among the top 15 in the nation and a program-record 14 wins in Big 12 Conference play.

UCF, ranked at No. 23 heading into the postseason, has climbed as high as No. 15 in the national rankings this year, just two spots shy of their program-best record achieved in 2015 and 2022.

The NCAA Wo�����’s College World Series will be held from May 28-June 4/5 at Devon Park in Oklahoma City.

UCF remains the only Florida school standing in this year’s postseason. For the third-straight year, the Knights ended the Gators’ season, as UCF completed a dramatic 4-3 comeback at the USTA National Campus to advance to the Sweet 16.

The Knights will head to Winston-Salem on Friday, May 8, for their matchup with No. 4 Wake Forest. The winner will advance to the Elite 8, where they will face the winner of Oklahoma/Arizona.

UCF in 2026 NCAA Tournament

UCF’s nationally ranked �����’s and wo�����’s tennis teams each clinched their spot in the NCAA Tournament, with the �����’s team securing hosting rights for the first and second rounds at the USTA National Campus.

UCF is the only university in the state of Florida to host a regional, and is one of just two schools in the state to see both its men’s and women’s team clinch spots in the premiere postseason tournament.

The semifinal and championship rounds will be held at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex in Athens, Georgia, May 16–17.

Wo�����’s Tennis Postseason Recap

The No. 20 wo�����’s team headed into the postseason riding high from clinching back-to-back Big 12 Conference regular season championships.

After advancing to the second round with their 4-1 victory over Navy at the NCAA Raleigh Regional, the Knights fell to the eighth-seeded NC State.

UCF’s Tournament History

The UCF wo�����’s team made its 11^th postseason appearance in program history, and the seventh of head coach Bryan Koniecko’s 10-year tenure. Prior to his arrival in 2016, the program had made just four NCAA Tournament appearances.

The men secured their ninth all-time bid to the tournament as the No. 16 national seed, continuing the streak of making the postseason in all three seasons of Head Coach Lloyd Bruce-Burgess’ tenure, beginning in 2024. Last year’s squad made history, advancing to the Sweet 16 for the first time.

The No. 14 wo�����’s golf team was selected to compete as the No. 3 seed in the Ann Arbor Regional, clinching its seventh-consecutive appearance at the premiere postseason competition. The seeding marks their highest in program history and is also the best of any Big 12 Conference team in this year’s competition.

The wo�����’s golf team is the seventh UCF program to compete at an NCAA postseason regional or championship event in 2025-26, joining �����’s and wo�����’s soccer, indoor track & field, �����’s basketball and �����’s and wo�����’s tennis.

Postseason Outlook

UCF’s regional includes Southern California as the top seed, followed by Duke, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Northwestern, Kansas, Texas Tech, UNLV, Columbia, Quinnipiac and Oakland.

The three-day event begins Monday, May 11, at University of Michigan Golf Course hosted by Michigan. The Knights are familiar with the course as they were previously selected for the same regional in 2022.

The top five teams to finish at each of the six regional sites will advance to the NCAA Championship, which will be held May 22–27 at the��Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California.

UCF’s Road to the NCAA Tournament

This will be UCF’s 20th regional appearance and the 11th of the last 15 seasons. Since head coach Emily Marron took over the program ahead of the 2012-13 season, the Knights have either qualified as a team or sent an individual to every NCAA regional.

The Knights have been nationally ranked all season and recently placed among the top three at the Big 12 Championship for their highest finish since joining the conference in 2023-24.

Sophomore Mila Jurine, a communication major from France, was crowned as the first individual Big 12 champion in UCF wo�����’s golf history. Jurine and senior psychology major Pimpisa Sisutham were named to the Big 12 Tournament Team.

UCF and the Big 12 unveiled the 2026 conference slate in January, with every game initially scheduled on Saturday. Two of those games are now shifted to Friday:

• Oct. 30 vs. Baylor (Mission X Space Game)
• Nov. 20 vs. Iowa State (Senior Knight)

TV and streaming designations and kickoff times will be added as announced.

2026 Schedule & Game Day Themes

-Home games in bold-

9/3 vs. Bethune-Cookman, 7 p.m., ESPN+ (Season-Opener)
9/12 at Pittsburgh
9/19 vs. Georgia State, 7 p.m., ESPN+ (Family Weekend)
9/26 vs. TCU (Big 12 Opener)
10/3 at Houston
10/10 at Oklahoma State
10/24 vs. BYU (Homecoming)
10/30 vs. Baylor, 7:30 p.m., ESPN (Mission X Space Game)
11/7 at Kansas
11/14 vs. Arizona State
11/20 vs. Iowa State, 6 p.m., FS1 (Senior Knight)
11/28 at Colorado

The Big 12 Championship Game is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 4, and will once again be played at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, in Dallas, Texas.

Under the direction of head coach Scott Frost, UCF carries early momentum into the 2026 season after landing quarterback Alonza Barnett III and a strong group of transfers through the portal. The Knights also secured a pair of four-star high school recruits, highlighting a solid overall class.

TICKETS

Season tickets for the 2026 campaign can be purchased at . Single game tickets are not yet for sale.

WHY WE BOUNCE

The 2026 campaign will mark the 20th season that UCF football plays its home games in Acrisure Bounce House. To recognize UCF’s 20 years of Acrisure Bounce House, ��a season-long celebration of the countless memories made inside the place Knight Nation calls home. The 2026 campaign is more than just another season. It is a chance to tell our story.

We want to know why YOU bounce. If you’d like to help us tell our story of the bonds built through game day experiences, , and be ready to include photos.

Tied at 72 with less than a minute remaining in Saturday’s game, junior forward Jordan Burks drilled a 3-pointer in front of the Knights’ bench that ignited UCF on to its 81-75 victory over the No. 17 Jayhawks.

As the buzzer sounded, droves of the more the 8,000 in attendance stormed the court in celebration — a nearly identical scene to the Knights’ 65-60 win over then-No. 3 Kansas in the first Big 12 Conference game in school history on Jan. 10, 2024.

“We beat a good basketball team tonight – the tradition, the coaching, the players they have. Just really proud of our players for playing for 40 minutes,” UCF head coach Johnny Dawkins says. “They showed a lot of heart throughout the game because Kansas is [terrific]. I thought our guys did a great job of sustaining effort on the court. I thought we finished strong at the end of the game when Kansas made a really good run to tie the ball game up. Those were things we were talking about as a team prior to us going away for Christmas break; how we have to play in conference, and I thought our guys it reflected that today in how we finished the game.”

UCF is now ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll for the first time since 2019.

This year’s squad now improves to 12-1, marking the program’s best start under Dawkins since he took the helm in 2016. On Monday, UCF cracked into the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since 2019, debuting at No. 25 in the Week 9 poll.

The ranking marks just the sixth week UCF has appeared in the AP Top 25 since the program’s inception in 1969 and the second time under Dawkins.

Senior guard and Orlando native Riley Kugel led with 19 points, followed by guard Themus Fulks with 16 points and Burke with 14. UCF’s 44 first-half points marked the most the Jayhawks have allowed this season, after previously holding then-No. 5 Duke and then-No. 17 Tennessee to 41 points apiece.

Up next, the Knights continue league play when they head to Oklahoma State for an 8 p.m. matchup on Jan. 6 before returning home Jan. 11 to face Cincinnati at 5 p.m.

The Big 12 boasts the most Top 25 teams (seven) of any conference in the country.

“At the end of this day, this needs to be behind us and we have to throw all of our preparation into Oklahoma State because that’s how this league is,” Dawkins says. “You’re going to have 17 more games like we had tonight. None of them are going to be different. All of these teams are well-coached, all these teams have a lot of talent so we have to prepare for it that way.”

Their mentality? Don’t tell us the odds.

“I told the team from the very beginning, no successful team goes through any journey that is easy. This is part of our journey,” UCF head coach Tiffany Roberts Sahaydak says. “How are we going to respond to this? You have the ability to go out there and play for them. Believe in how good you are. Visualize doing great things and the rest will follow.”

From that point on, the Knights closed the regular season with a nine-match unbeaten streak, helping them clinch the No. 7 seed and hosting rights in the NCAA Tournament.

UCF will hold a first-round game on Friday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at the UCF Soccer Complex against Maine, who just won its third-straight America East championship title.

The Knights are one of a conference-record eight teams from the Big 12 selected to participate in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

“After what we went through on a weekly basis in the Big 12 this year — a historical year with how many teams earned postseason bids — what excites me as we head into the NCAA Tournament is we’ve seen the best in the country. We are part of that,” Roberts Sahaydak says. “Obviously it’s one game at a time, and that starts with Maine, but the team should be feeling really confident because they are prepared from the physical and tactical and mental tests they’ve had all season.”

UCF’S NCAA Tournament History

This year’s postseason appearance will mark UCF’s first as a member of the Big 12 Conference and first since 2022 when the Knights advanced to the tournament’s second round.

Friday’s home match will mark the 11th time that UCF has hosted an NCAA Tournament First Round competition and the program’s first since 2017.

In all, it will be the program’s 23rd all-time appearance in the NCAA Division I Championship. UCF ranks among the NCAA’s top 25 winningest teams nationally since the inception of Division I wo�����’s soccer in 1982.

Tickets/Broadcast Info

General admission tickets are $10 and can be at ucfknights.com. The first 100 UCF students with valid UCF ID will receive free entry (first come, first serve). Stadium gates open at 6 p.m.

The match will air on ESPN+.

UCF �����’s basketball coach Johnny Dawkins made his declaration Jan. 4 prior to the Knights’ Big 12 Conference opener at Kansas State, and in front of a raucous, sellout home crowd six days later, they proved it.

Built upon a second-half surge and stifling efforts on the defensive end, UCF put its new conference on notice, toppling the No. 3 Kansas Jayhawks by a 65-60 final score before 9,469 fans at Addition Financial Arena, marking the third largest crowd in program history and the second highest in a regular season game.

The victory ranks among the most prolific in program history, representing the first against a top-three nationally ranked opponent, the second against a top-five foe, and the ninth against a squad ranked within the top 25. En route to the team’s upset, the Knights (10-4, 1-1 Big 12) erased a Jayhawks (13-2, 1-1 Big 12) lead that grew to as many as 16 points with 3:45 remaining in the first half.

“It was a great night for UCF. Our guys kept fighting in a game in which they got down early in the first half to a very good Kansas basketball team,” Dawkins says. “When they get that type of lead, you start to get knocked back a little bit. In our timeouts, I was trying to settle them down and stress that we have to take it possession by possession. We talked about working our way back in it in that last four-minute segment, and we were able to do that.

“I’m proud of the way we fought back with great courage, effort and energy throughout the entire night.”

Dawkins’ Notable Streaks

In the first meeting between the two programs, the Knights also notched their first win within Big 12 Conference play and extended a few notable win streaks Dawkins himself owns against Kansas and its head coach, Bill Self — who in his 20 seasons at Kansas has led the Jayhawks to two national championship titles.

UCF’s effort Wednesday represented Dawkins’ second win against the Jayhawks as a head coach, joining his 2014 triumph over Kansas as the head coach of Stanford in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Overall, Dawkins improved to 4-0 against the Jayhawks in his career, having bested Kansas twice as a player with Duke in the 1985-86 season.

Dawkins soaked up the team’s win Wednesday among the onslaught of fans who euphorically rushed the court.

Fantastic Finish

With the two squads trading blows throughout much of the second half, the Knights finally claimed a lead they would not relinquish with 2:57 to play in the final half.

Fifth-year forward Ibrahima Diallo grabbed a pass from junior guard Jaylin Sellers just outside the paint and finished a turnaround jumper moments later, giving his team a 59-57 advantage.

Fellow fifth-year forward CJ Walker, who made his first start for the Knights since March 11, 2022, gave UCF a bit of breathing room with a pair of free throws, and a Sellers layup coupled with two more converted free throws from junior guard Darius Johnson iced the Knights’ first win against a top five-ranked opponent since the team prevailed against then-No. 4 UConn by a 68-63 final score Nov. 25, 2011.

The timely shot by Diallo punctuated one of the better all-around games authored by the Saly, Senegal native, finishing with a season-high 13 points and five total rebounds.

“He was great,” Dawkins says of Diallo. “He’s going against arguably the best ‘big’ in college basketball, Hunter Dickinson is a terrific player. For Ibrahima to go toe-to-toe with him and have to battle him in the low post, he did a great job, and I’m proud of the way he stepped up and gave us a huge effort tonight.”

The final sequence, one that saw the Knights outscore the Jayhawks 8-3 and limit Kansas to one field goal in the game’s final 3:23 of play, represented a microcosm of the team’s dominant second half in the face of one of college basketball’s blue bloods.

“We knew we had zone (defense) in our bag,” Dawkins says. “It’s something that we work on and we felt it was timely to play some today. That’s why you saw our guys play it so well, because they’re accustomed to playing it in practice. We were able to stay with it longer because it was effective at times in the second half.”

Up Next

The Knights have a quick turnaround to their next Big 12 test when the Black and Gold welcome the No. 18/17 BYU Cougars to Addition Financial Arena Saturday afternoon. Tipoff for the contest is slated for 4 p.m. Jan. 13 and will be streamed on ESPN+.

For everything you need to know about attending a �����’s basketball game, visit .

What makes a conference rival? Sometimes it’s geography. Sometimes it’s similarities. Sometimes it’s on-field success and unforgettable finishes.

As UCF has grown from its humble beginnings as a Division III program in the 1979 to joining the Big 12 this year, so too has its fiercest rivalries evolved.

War on I-4

The UCF-South Florida rivalry has been the standard for the last decade.

Two proud Central Florida institutions, 100 miles apart, thrown together in the American Athletic Conference —with no other leagues foes this side of East Carolina.

The record book says the programs began competing in a 1971 baseball game between the Florida Tech Knights of the Pegasus and the South Florida Golden Brahmans. South Florida prevailed 5-1.

The schools first met in �����’s basketball in 1972.�� Alum and longtime season ticket holder Joe DeSalvo ’75, former Florida Times-Union sports editor, remembers a home-opening game in 1974-75 (won 75-74 by UCF) played at Winter Park High School.

While the War on I-4 rivalry was officially established in 2016 across all sports between the programs, ABC and ESPN helped cement the status of the football rivalry three years earlier by making it a regular Black Friday nationally televised event to end the regular season.

Though the teams have played only 14 times overall (and never until 2005 when it was Big East vs. Conference USA), their football meetings have produced notable fireworks — most recently in 2022 when a favored UCF squad needed a highlight-reel end-zone grab by tight end Alec Holler to ensure a spot in the American Athletic Conference (AAC) Championship Game a week later.

There have been other headline-making contests — a 49-42 Knight home win in 2017 that finished off a perfect regular season, then a crazy 58-46 UCF victory in Tampa in 2020 that featured 646 yards by the Knights and 577 by South Florida.

“The great thing about the South Florida situation is that it was a rivalry for many years even when the two teams did not play,” says longtime UCF radio play-by play voice Marc Daniels. “UCF had a very young program — and then South Florida announced it was starting a program. The thought was, ‘Does UCF want to play them?’

“But it’s a game that should have been played.

“By the time it happened in 2005, (head coach) Jim Leavitt had South Florida rolling. The 2007 game wasn’t close (64-12 in favor of South Florida). It began as a four-game series, South Florida won all four — and they had their ‘We’re No. 2 in the country’ moment in 2007.

“But there was no guarantee the teams were going to play again after that until UCF joined the American in 2013.”

In fact, AAC commissioner Mike Aresco talked often about the need for his league to build more interest via rivalries —and used the UCF-South Florida version as the conference’s best example. UCF took home the inaugural War on I-4 trophy in the all-sports competition and its never left Orlando since.

UCF in 2023 has moved into the Big 12 Conference, and there currently are no more football meetings between the Knights and Bulls on the books. Any future games in any sport will be of the non-conference variety.

Before the War

There was a meaningful rivalry with Stetson in basketball and baseball — two ɫ����’s earliest sports established — because of the proximity of the schools. The Rollins and Florida Southern series (in the Sunshine State Conference starting in 1975-76) flourished in the ’70s and ’80s when Torchy Clark was the UCF �����’s basketball coach.

“Remember, in Florida at that time, there was no one (in pro sports) except the (Miami) Dolphins and (Tampa Bay) Bucs— no hockey, no baseball, no Orlando Magic, and no UCF football until 1979.

“Torchy had a competitive basketball team — and when they would play Rollins in the Winter Park High School gym (in 1976) it was the biggest sporting event in Orlando,” Daniels says.

Knight fans have seen plenty of football shifts — based on UCF beginning as an NCAA Division III program in 1979, elevating to Division II (1982), FCS (1990), FBS (1996), the Mid-American Conference (2002), Conference USA (2005), the AAC (2013) and now the Big 12 (2023). That doesn’t count the handful of other conferences other Knight teams participated in.

Considering Daniels has called every Knight football game since 1995 (the Daunte Culpepper days), the broadcaster and voice of the Knights knows a little something about which opponents over the years have fired up UCF fans:

“As UCF went through its Division II and I-AA years, people talked about Bethune-Cookman as a rival because of the geographics,” he says. “Youngstown State is often mentioned just because of the history of a (1993) playoff game in the snow.”

In DeSalvo’s view, the football aspect started in 1979: “I went to that first game — we played St. Leo right out of the gate. It was only the two games those first two seasons, but that made it a rivalry.

“And in those really early years Valdosta State (eight games from 1982-94) was a rival for us — and Georgia Southern (11 games from 1982-91). Those were the better programs we were challenging back then. Southern Miss (UCF dropped six of eight meetings between 2005-12) was always a tough game in Conference USA.

“Everybody wanted to beat UCF. We seemed to have a big target on our back. Maybe it was partly because we were a big school from a big city. In their minds, we were the city slickers from Disney World.

“It made it more of a challenge, but history shows we were up for it.”

Rivalries with Longevity

Veteran Knight fans talk about the days when games against Tulsa (three of the teams’ meetings have been C-USA title games—in 2005, 2007, 2012) and East Carolina qualified as red-letter calendar dates.

The Tulsa rivalry was fueled by four straight Golden Hurricane wins (2015-16-19-20). The Knights have played more football games (21) against East Carolina than any other opponent and own more triumphs over Memphis (15) than any other foe.

And Daniels is quick to point out, don’t forget about Marshall — and old foe from the MAC who went on the ride along with UCF to C-USA.

“In my mind, Marshall was the first big rivalry because of how it happened,” Daniels says. “UCF went from independent to the MAC. Marshall made the move from dominating in I-AA to the MAC and they were having success.

“That leads to the first time we played which was 2002. UCF had played at Arizona State two weeks before and (quarterback) Ryan Schneider injured his ribs. After a bye week we went up to play Marshall and (quarterback) Byron Leftwich and they were just ready for us. It was as if they were saying, ‘Who is this new kid on the block from Florida?’ ”

Marshall won 26-21, but the Knights earned some respect, in part due to Schneider’s warrior-like approach. UCF actually had the ball at the end on Marshall’s side of the field until the drive stalled. Marshall won the first three games of the series.

“That brought us to 2005 and UCF had a 17-game losing streak, the longest in the country, including all of George O’Leary’s first year (2004),” Daniels says.

UCF beat Marshall 23-13 — and Knight Nation tore the goalposts down in the old Citrus Bowl.

“Fast-forward into a series that had been owned by Marshall and that UCF then began to dominate,” Daniels says. “The two teams played in the Gasparilla Bowl after the 2019 season, and that brought back a lot of memories. There were good things about the Marshall series as far as turning UCF fortunes around — and that made it special for Knight fans.”

“There were certain schools you had to get up for—you had to win that game. Marshall became one of those,” DeSalvo says.

Memphis is next on the list and extended beyond football.

Keith Clanton led the UCF �����’s basketball team to its first win over Memphis, 68-67, in 2012 in front of the then-fifth largest crowd in school history — who rushed the court to celebrate the milestone. In wo�����’s soccer, UCF and Memphis appeared regularly atop the C-USA standings — and the Knights headed into the AAC with momentum by shutting out Memphis in the 2012 C-USA tournament en route to its first C-USA tournament title. The teams’ series evened out, 6-6, during their AAC era.

In football, the Tigers beat UCF back in 1990 and then the Knights won 13 straight. The 2005 UCF victory (38-17) saw All-America UCF running back Kevin Smith (164 yards) outrush DeAngelo Williams (136) when Williams was the leading rusher in the country.

Adds Daniels, “That game was noteworthy because at that time UCF didn’t have all that many wins over name programs.”

In 2013 there was the UCF kickoff with the game tied and less than two minutes to go—resulting in a big hit and forced fumble by the Knights’ William Stanback. Drico Johnson picked it up and scored—and UCF won 24-17.

The teams played four times combined in 2017 and 2018, though the regular-season meeting in 2017 almost didn’t happen because of a hurricane. The conference title game in 2017 was a 62-55 UCF double overtime win that pushed the Knights to 12-0. McKenzie Milton threw for 494 yards and five touchdowns in the highest-scoring FBS conference title game in history (including 1,479 combined total yards). At one point in the first half, Milton completed 15 consecutive passes for 266 yards and three TDs.

Then in 2018, UCF was down 16 on the road in the rain and came back to win 31-30—partly via a fourth-and-one TD play (a 71-yard run by Taj McGowan). UCF backup quarterback Darriel Mack did the job in the 2018 AAC title game with 348 passing yards and four rushing TDs–after Milton had been hurt the week before.

“Those were four incredible games. In fact, there was another one, that UCF lost 50-49 in 2020 after gaining 798 yards, that was an incredible football game as well,” Daniels says.

Daniels puts Cincinnati on the rivalry list with South Florida, Marshall and Memphis — and says he will never forget the 2015 game versus the Bearcats.

“UCF lost 52-7 in the winless season,” he says, “then turned around and beat them in Scott Frost’s first year in 2016. The ESPN College GameDay meeting in prime time in 2018 was an amazing week in so many ways as far as overall branding for the football program and for UCF in general.”

Cincinnati claimed three straight versus UCF (2019-20-21), making the Knights’ comeback victory over the Bearcats in 2022 all the more satisfying (and coming against a CFP qualifier from the 2021 season). UCF fans and national college football writers (Andy Staples, Andrea Adelson) believe the impact of the Knights’ 2017-18 25-game unbeaten streak paved the way for Cincinnati’s CFP breakthrough in that ’21 season.

UCF and Cincinnati have been responsible for four of five AAC football titles from 2017 through 2021.

And now the story will continue as both programs head to the Big 12.

Who’s Next?

So, where can UCF partisans direct their enthusiasm in this expanding new league?

Cincinnati may be the frontrunner, but what about Houston, where SpaceU takes on Space City? Maybe former independent BYU, part of the quartet that became Big 12 members July 1?

How will Knight Nation react to conference assignments against Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Baylor, West Virginia, Texas Tech and TCU? (Given the move of Oklahoma and Texas to the Southeastern Conference beginning in 2024, exclude that duo.)

What about the most recent Big 12 additions — Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah?

“I think rivalries are really healthy,” says DeSalvo, “and it’ll be interesting to see how they develop in the Big 12.

“Maybe Cincinnati? At least recently they were always in the way — it came down to that game.

“Maybe West Virginia. Maybe Houston. Maybe even Baylor, just based on that Fiesta Bowl game 10 years ago.

“And we have a history with Cincinnati and Houston — and they have a history with us.

“Of the schools from the AAC, there will be a little bit of competition to see who is going to do better in the Big 12.”

UCF recently recorded its first victory in its first outing as a Big 12 member in a 1-0 wo�����’s soccer road win at Purdue.

There will be many more opportunities to come.

Check back in five years — and see how the rivalry debate unfolded.

“It’s going to be fun,” DeSalvo says.

May 24, 2023. Big 12 Business Summit. Arlington, Texas.

Eric DeSalvo ’09, UCF associate athletics director of #content, settles into his seat among the crowd of marketing and sales leadership staff from around the Big 12 Conference as the league’s commissioner, Brett Yormark, takes the stand for his opening remarks.

“He starts it off and he goes, ‘These are the four things that are my pillars: innovation, creativity, disruption and taking risks,’” DeSalvo recalls. “And I immediately think, is he talking about himself or UCF?”

Being “bold” and “innovative” and “disruptive” might just sound like hot buzz words for brands to adopt in 2023. But in UCF’s case, it’s authentic. The Knights actually are all of these adjectives because they’ve had to be.

Without the resources of longer-established universities — University of Florida was founded in 1853, UCF in 1963…

Without a longstanding history of fandom and donor support — University of Texas’ alumni association was organized in 1885. UCF’s in 1975…

Without decades of nationally televised games and promotional broadcasts — Ohio State has hosted ESPN’s College GameDay a record 22 times, UCF once…

UCF has had to strategically rely on its youth to find ways to break through the noise in a state that boasts three other Power 5 institutions.

Enter: The benefit of big and the power of social media.

Building a Brand

Established in 1963, UCF’s meteoric rise to the Big 12 Conference makes it the youngest Power 5 institution in the country.

“It’s a modern athletic department. I think it’s the future of higher education. It’s the future of college sports,” says Zack Lassiter, vice president of athletics for Abilene Christian University who served as UCF’s senior associate athletic director of external operations from 2012-15.

But it wasn’t always necessarily this way.

DeSalvo knows UCF’s brand arguably better than anyone. The son ɫ���� graduate Joe DeSalvo ’75, he grew up going to UCF games in the mid-1990s at the Citrus Bowl and went on to graduate from UCF himself. He has worked for the athletic department since 2011 — first in communications before he transitioned to what is now known as the #content department in 2013.

He says in his youth, he would have described UCF as having “a lot of potential” and “on the brink.”

“For a long time, UCF was “UC-If” — If we only didn’t get a phantom holding call against Georgia. If we didn’t miss the extra point here. And there were so many of those games across all sports that you were like, you’re right there —�� if only,” he says. “But you saw the potential. You were definitely on the cusp.”

On3 National College Football host Andy Staples, who moved to Central Florida as a middle schooler and graduated from Lake Mary High School, echoes the same sentiments.

“You didn’t think ɫ���� in the same way you would have thought of Miami or Florida State or Florida,” Staples says. “You’d go to the campus and you didn’t see a lot ɫ���� gear. It didn’t feel like a destination-type campus. We went there a lot for science fairs or somebody would be having their graduation at the arena — it didn’t feel as much like a place that people say, ‘I grow up wanting to go to UCF,’ or ‘I’ve been a UCF fan my whole life.’ You just never would expect anybody to say that back in the ’90s. Watching it change over the decades has been pretty amazing.”

“ ‘I’ve been a UCF fan my whole life.’ You just never would expect anybody to say that back in the ’90s. Watching it change over the decades has been pretty amazing.” — Andy Staples, On3 National College Football host

When former Athletic Director Todd Stansbury recruited Lassiter to join UCF’s athletic department in 2012, the west coast native didn’t have much familiarity with UCF.

Lassiter made it a point to ask a lot of questions and listen to campus counterparts, young alumni and students to gain a better understanding of how the university had gotten to where it was so quickly.

“We were young, but we were big, and so in that sense you could tell that, that was something that we could probably do better than anyone else,” Lassiter says.

Indeed, UCF’s enrollment in 2012 just tipped 60,000. Today it’s more than 68,000. The university confers more than 18,000 degrees annually, and its alumni base clocks in at more than 368,000 — nearly half of which still live in Central Florida.

Perhaps the most important stat is that the average alumni age is 42 years old. So, by the time that Lassiter joined the fold, social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter, founded in 2006) and Instagram (founded in 2010) were starting to really take off in the sports world and UCF’s biggest fan base was very active on social media.

It was the perfect combination.

“Perception is reality. And if you feel like you’re getting hit up by a bunch ɫ���� fans on Twitter, their reality is you are because the numbers are there between our enrollment and alumni,” DeSalvo says. “Our fanbase can celebrate the big moments with big numbers. They can pile on to somebody who shows some disrespect. They can win a Twitter poll like no other. By always showing up, they’ve backed up what is on paper.”

So, the department decided to lean into social to stand out. UCF Athletics hired a full-time social media manager, Keal Blache ’11, who served a short stint. When he vacated the position in 2013, Lassiter approached DeSalvo about the opening because of DeSalvo’s penchant for being creative with the social accounts in his role at the time as the communications contact for the volleyball and baseball teams.

“I’ll never forget — I think I’m at (former UCF basketball player and athletics staff member) Mike O’Donnell’s wedding. And Todd Stansbury’s there and he goes, ‘Hey you’re moving over to the social role, right?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘Alright. Push the envelope.’ OK. Todd is telling me to push the envelope. I’ll do my best.

“I can thank Blake Bortles and Storm Johnson and J.J. Worton��’14 ��and Terrance Plummer ’21 and that crew for helping me push the envelope because there’s no greater year one than going to the .”

In the last decade, UCF has had three athletic directors — all of whom DeSalvo says have continued to buy-into the “push the envelope” mentality — four football head coaches and four university presidential leadership transitions. But the same voice on social media, which has benefitted UCF immensely.

“If there is somebody better at what Eric has done and what he has built, I haven’t met him. And there were a lot of other talented people that were a part of that. But I think what made him so great is he believed it,” Lassiter says. “He could do it in a way that could connect, and a lot of our folks loved that it was a UCF person doing this. That’s the authenticity of what social can be at its best — how do you become yourself in a way that galvanizes and gets people excited? He ran with it in ways that I hope 50 years from now if there’s a story about who were those individuals that played a part of that, I think Eric deserves a ton of credit for what he did. I think he had a lot of really talented people around him, and he was given kind of the keys to the kingdom so to speak, and we took off.”

Those talented people are who DeSalvo credits for the team’s ability to not only stay relevant but maintain UCF’s status as one of the best brands to follow.

“The staff is key. I can’t have all the ideas. The ideas can come from anyone — from the AD (athletics director) to the interns, and many have over the years,” DeSalvo says. “We also have a work environment to where it’s loose, but they are well aware of who our brand is. I always say, ‘There’s no bad ideas.’ I also get to say, ‘We don’t say no around here a whole bunch.’ If it’s trending and there’s a way we can insert UCF’s brand into this conversation and it makes sense, let’s do it.”

The Tweets That Made Us

Nicole Auerbach, The Athletic Senior Writer: Not everyone realized this as early as UCF, where social media is about fun. It’s about engaging and having fun, maybe going viral. But it’s about doing things that are different and not just having no personality. They always had personality, and I think that was immediately embraced by the fan base that was very online and very ready to engage on any topic.

Eric DeSalvo: The tweet was on a whim. I’m with (former Associate Athletics Director for Strategic Communications) Dan Forcella and I drafted it before the playoff selection show had gotten to it. We were wanting it to be Bama. And it happens, and I hit send. It really put us out there. It’s my favorite tweet I’ve gotten to send.

Eric DeSalvo: That was designed by (former graphic designer) Channing Curtis. We kept seeing the Elmo version, and I asked him, “Hey can you just put Knightro in his place?” The first time we ever got to use it — he made it that day — we cracked the top 10 in the College Football Playoff rankings.

Andy Staples: I use Knightro gifs pretty frequently. I think Knightro with flames behind him is a very effective way of getting your point across. Those folks are very online. They’re very savvy. They know how to get our attention in the media, and they know how to keep the discussion going. They will defend UCF tooth and nail. They will not let you get away with slandering UCF in any way, shape or form. Which I appreciate. And there are other fan bases that are like that. But [UCF] seems to be a little more in on the joke than some of the others. The more established fanbases, you get people who are just mad at you. UCF Twitter, they know what they’re doing. And they know they know what they’re doing.

Eric DeSalvo: I wasn’t at that game — I was at my mother-in-law’s. But the game was on ESPN3. You could actually rewind, thankfully. He catches that ball. I’m losing my mind.

That was the No. 1 Vine for us for a long time. That one was getting so much national play.

That’s up there because it was so iconic.

DeSalvo: I joke that my iPhone that shot Danny White saying “national champs, undefeated” should go to the (UCF Athletics) Hall of Fame.

Nobody knew Danny was going to say that. We had a plan in place where we would continue to challenge the CFP. That’s what we were doing and needed to do for our team. (Senior Executive Associate Athletics Director of Brand Advancement and Chief Branding Officer) Jimmy Skiles took precedent from when he saw the year��Auburn wasn’t��in the national championship game and were undefeated — they had national championship rings made for their team. It was on the front cover of Sports Illustrated. And he remembered it. If they could do that back then, why can’t we?

So, we crafted messaging for like “undefeated champions.” We didn’t straight up say national champions. (Former graphic designer) Chris Stoney made some motion graphics, “13-0. Only undefeated team, who’s next?”

We knew if we didn’t do anything by the time our game ended and the playoff game started that day, we would be kind of irrelevant in the grand scheme of games. It would be a nice win and move on.

People should know Danny looking into my phone wasn’t anything new. I kind of conditioned him to do that, especially at road wins. I would go live at Facebook right as the clock would hit zero to take fans behind the scenes. A lot of the time we’d be walking by Danny as we went to the locker room. So, it wasn’t anything new for him to see my phone get shoved in his face.

He just quickly says those magic words. Oh boy. Here we go.

Andy Staples: Don’t run afoul ɫ���� Twitter. That’s all I got to say. This is a very passionate, very aggressive online fan base. Which listen that will fit right in (the Big 12). The good thing about UCF is that passion will match with Kansas State and Oklahoma State and Iowa State — they are extraordinarily passionate people. They really love their teams. These are groups that will really appreciate one another.

Charging On

As social media has served as one of the tools to help define UCF’s brand over the years, one constant has been the Knights’ ability to rise up, to band together, to believe in its potential — to Charge On.

As a rallying cry, Charge On was introduced during the Stansbury and Lassiter era.

“It wasn’t as though there was one calling card that really captured the energy or the belief of a UCF fan — like ‘Go Knights!’ was something to where, well how many other Knights are there in college athletics?” Lassiter says. “And I remember thinking that in social media hashtags were really important. What is that we can do?”

“Obviously a decade later it’s become something that I feel is the perfect, simple way to describe who UCF is.” — Zack Lassiter, UCF’s senior associate athletic director of external operations from 2012-15.

And then Charge On surfaced. Lassiter recalls the idea came from an alum, who suggested it because the phrase is part of the lyrics in UCF’s fight song.

“When the idea was proposed, it seemed to make too much sense,” Lassiter says. “This describes who we are. There’s a great history behind it. It’s incredibly nimble and flexible in how you can apply it certain ways.”

So, Lassiter conducted an experiment. He walked around UCF Athletics’ main administration buildings and starting using the term without explanation to elicit genuine reactions from the staffers.

“Nobody could figure out a way to say why that wouldn’t work,” he says. “Obviously a decade later it’s become something that I feel is the perfect, simple way to describe who UCF is.”

There is still so much ɫ����’s story to be written. More traditions to carve out. More pushing the envelope unapologetically.

And what makes DeSalvo and the rest of the gatekeepers of the brand excited about the next chapter is the union with the renegades of the Big 12.

“We’re finally in a league that is exactly where we should be … its identity is completely us,” DeSalvo says. “Not only do we get to do this stuff here and try to do it as big as possible, now we have the backing of a Power 5 league that is going to help just throw gasoline on the fire and get it out there further.”

In the spring of 1980, Linda Gooch ’85 became a member of the UCF cheer team. In August 1984 she was officially hired as the program’s head coach (the 2023 football season marks her 40th with the Knights) and a decade later the squad began competing for national titles. Since then they’ve been routine high finishers in national competitions, claiming Universal Cheerleaders Association national titles in 2003, 2007 and 2020 and a UCA game day national title in 2019. In addition, Gooch — now the longest-tenured employee in UCF Athletics — has been a key figure in the creation of mascot Knightro and the KnightMoves dance team. Her husband Alan Gooch ’84 ’89MA played football at UCF and then coached football with the Knights for 22 years. Both are members of the UCF Athletics Hall of Fame.

This is Gooch’s story on how the cheer program over the decades helped UCF’s rise to national notoriety.

I started coaching UCF cheer in 1984 — at the same time I was teaching eighth-grade history. I would teach school during the day and drive straight to campus and coach the team in the evening. Back then, to qualify for the national championship schools would send in videotapes of their teams performing stunts and pyramids. From those entry tapes, the top 10 teams in each division were invited to compete for the title. This is the 1980s and with no internet or social media. We were pretty isolated. We had no real idea what skills other teams were including in their videos. All we knew was what we saw see at summer cheerleading camp. This was a time of incredible growth for cheerleading. This was on the heels of Olympic gymnasts Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci — and you had all these little girls who had watched them.

The popularity of gymnastics exploded in the US during the ’70s, but there just weren’t enough qualified coaches. As high school programs, like mine, closed down many girls — took their acrobatic skills to cheerleading. What had begun as a sideline activity developed into a kind of alternative gymnastics. I was on the cusp of all of that.

During my first 10 years of coaching from 1984 to 1994 we submitted video entry tapes every year but kept receiving rejection letters. If you were close to being selected, you received not just a letter but a plaque. When you walk into my office today, on a shelf I have four of the rejection plaques. I keep those up there to remind me that nothing happens overnight, and you just have to stay at it. All those sayings about perseverance are really true. You just keep working and you’ll break through at some point.

In 1994 there was no rejection letter. I finally got a congratulations phone call. We had qualified for nationals. I was so pumped. I immediately called our Athletic Director Steve Sloan. I said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that after 10 years of trying we have finally qualified to compete for the Division I-AA national championship.” He went on and on congratulating us. I said, “The bad news is the competition is in San Diego, California, and I need $10,000 to get our team out there.” There was a long pause. Back in 1994 $10,000 might as well have been $100,000. He said, “Well, we’re going to have to find a way to get you out there.” Student Government came up with $3,000, our cheerleaders fundraised and came up with $3,000, the alumni association gave us $3,000 and UCF Athletics made up the difference.

That first year we learned a great lesson about how video works. In the ’90s the college cheerleading national championship was aired (taped delay) on ESPN. We would record the show and watch it repeatedly during all those years when we were getting the rejection letters. The teams just seemed so incredible. So flawless in their performances. What we did not know was that back then the TV show edited out all the falls. I thought everybody hit their routines perfectly.

My thought heading out to San Diego was, “We just don’t want to embarrass ourselves.” I figured, it’s our first year competing, let’s just keep everything in the air, so I gave our team a routine that I knew we could hit. Well we nailed it and came in a very close second to Morehead State University (in 1994). We came back to the Orlando airport and the (UCF marching) band met us at the gate. They were playing the fight song as we came off the plane and it was awesome.

We never looked back. In 1996 we moved into Division I-A along with our football team; in 1999 we finished in the top three; in 2002 we were runner up; and in 2003 we won the title. That 2003 championship truly was a David and Goliath situation because the University of Kentucky had won eight consecutive national championships. There were two generations of college cheerleaders who had never known another champion. For UCF to come in and do that was absolutely magical. Showing it wasn’t a fluke, we came back and won it again in 2007 and at that point UCF Athletics was really taking off. We had opened our on-campus football stadium that year with the Texas game.

There have been some incredible moments that mark milestones for the program. In the Troy State playoff game (1987) as a coach it was incredibly gratifying to get the noise penalty. After all that’s what every cheerleading coach should aspire to — having it that loud. I remember the officials walking over to (then head coach) Gene McDowell and saying, “Coach, you’re going to need to get on the PA and tell the fans to quiet down so we can get the ball snapped.” And he replied, “We’ll take the penalty.” It was great. I have one of those penalty flags framed in my office — as a badge of honor. Winning the first cheer championship (2003) and having our own documentary on WE TV after we won our second title in 2007 certainly elevated our national profile and traveling to Paris in 2013 to represent the USA in the European Open Championship put us on a world stage.

In the world of cheerleading people had stopped asking “Where is UCF anyways?” They knew who we were.

One of the most gratifying moments for me was ESPN’s College GameDay coming to campus in 2018. Lee Corso has a tradition of putting on the mascot head for whatever team he is going to pick to win. Coach Corso called me (earlier in the week) and said “Linda, this is going to be epic. I’m going to put the whole knight costume on.” We knew that this could possibly be one of the most iconic video shots in all of College GameDay; something that would be played and replayed on the show for years to come. We had 90 seconds during the commercial to get Lee Corso into our Knightro costume. We pulled it off and Coach was right — it was epic.

The GameDay experience was a chance to raise the curtain. They give you five days’ notice if you are selected to host the show. If your spirit program isn’t doing a great job at your games and you haven’t created great traditions and a great game day experience for your fans, the no amount of magic is going to happen in those five days to get you ready. Fortunately, at UCF we had been preparing for this moment for most of my adult life. Now it was just a matter of raising the curtain and showing the world what we have going on at UCF.

We always said it does not matter what you’re doing at UCF; just try to be the best at what you do. We are an aircraft carrier of a university. Positioned in Orlando, Florida, right in the middle of the state, it was our geographic birthright to be competitive at whatever we applied ourselves to. Athletics is just one of those areas where we are going to excel. We knew it was just a matter of time when all of our sports would eventually be competing on a national stage. Our goal was to make sure our spirit program was ready when that happened.

When people ask about the organization of the spirit program, I tell them it’s like a football team. You have the offense and the defense and the special teams. Cheerleading is the offense; the dance team is the defense, and the mascot program is the special teams. We’re all part of one big team totaling 70-80 people and we work very hard to be unified.

In terms of mascots, in about 1986 or 1987 a yellow dragon first appeared on our sideline and that was Puff. Puff looked a little like a bumblebee, and it had black dragon chest stripes. Then came Mack the Knight, who was sort of a cross between an astronaut and a knight. He had googly eyes and a football body.

In 1994 the athletic department decided that we needed to create a real animated mascot and asked if I would manage that aspect of the program. Trey Gordon had been a cheerleader and went on to work in student government. Trey took an interest in this project and I suggested he get some drawings done. He went to Metropolis Graphics in Winter Park and the committee loved the initial drawings. We had the costume made and Knightro I was born. Knightro II was similar but had a plastic face kind of like a doll. When it needed to be remade again, someone suggested the costume needed more sparkle so we had a vendor out at Disney create Knightro III (aka Glitter Knightro). All that glitter was heavy and “Glitter Knightro” weighed 50 pounds, making game days in Florida particularly rough. In 2007 we redesigned the costume again and that brought us our beloved Knightro IV costume that we have today.

The KnightMoves dance team kind of grew organically. We already had Starlet Knights, which were the auxiliaries of the marching band — flag-bearers, baton twirlers and a dance team. The dance team wanted to participate at basketball games and we tried that. It made sense for athletics to govern that group, and so they asked me to take on that assignment, too. Our dance team began just with basketball and but as we moved to the on-campus stadium we decided to bring the dance team down on the football sideline as well. They have been a wonderful addition.

I get asked a lot, “What does it take to win at the highest level?” To win the championship you’ve got to keep everything in the air and hit your routine. It’s two minutes and 30 seconds, and you have to be perfect. There is no do-over. It’s rarely about the most talented team. It’s really about who can hit their routine in that moment on that night under those lights and with all of that pressure. It’s not just preparing them physically, it’s preparing them mentally; coaching them to be at their best when their best is needed.

It’s so important to be open to change. Nothing stays the same — strategies are always evolving. It’s the same for us. You can’t be stuck on how you’ve always done things. This is something that I have always loved about our university.

Our UCF culture embraces being the disruptors. Change is our middle name. As a young university we’ve had to be open to trying new things.

More than the championships and success, it’s my goal that members of our team leave with life skills. After college the ability to go out in the world and apply the discipline, structure and teamwork that they have learned from being a part of our team toward success in life. That is what our program is about. Learning to work together with people from different parts of the country and different backgrounds provides such an opportunity for growth. If you come in to UCF as a freshman and you’ve lived in the same town all your life and you’ve gone to the same schools, same church and been around the same friends growing up, then use college to spend time with someone different than you.

I’ve had members of our team tell me, “This program has changed my life. If you can make it four years here in this program, you can do anything.” I believe it is the camaraderie of a team environment and our emphasis on life skills that sets them up for success in life after college – it is a launching pad to bigger and better things ahead. We have hit so many milestones and reached so many goals already and we are just getting started.

Big 12, here we come. Let’s Go Knights, Charge On.