Bounce House Bungle: UCF historic collapse against Baylor ruins Big 12 party | Commentary
Wait a minute!
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
This wasn’t in the script.
This was supposed to be a football festival, a pigskin party and a gridiron gala all rolled into one.
It was supposed to be a feel-good affair filled with lollipops, lemon drops and candy shops.
Instead, it quickly turned from a huge celebration into an embarrassing humiliation.
UCF’s festive Big 12 home debut against Baylor inexplicably and inexcusably turned into the most monumental collapse in program history on Saturday.
How does this happen?
How does UCF go from a four-touchdown lead midway through the third quarter to a crushing 36-35 defeat?
How can UCF be blowing out Baylor 35-7 in the second half and allow the struggling left-for-dead Bears to rise up and score 29 unanswered points in under 18 minutes?
How can UCF score 21 points on its first eight plays of the game and not score any points in the final 22 minutes of the game?
You’ve heard of The Choke at Doak? Well, just call this one The Bounce House Bungle. In the histories of their programs, UCF has never blown such a big lead and Baylor has never rallied from such big deficit.
Baylor didn’t just ruin UCF’s Big 12 house-warming, the Bears came to the party at UCF’s home, wiped their muddy boots on the the expensive Oriental rug, spilled red wine on the fancy white sofa, tossed the butts from their victory cigars on the Italian tile floor and did a celebratory donut on the lawn as they left.
Coming into this game, I thought there was no way UCF could come out a loser on this celebratory Saturday. Even if they lost a hard-fought back-and-forth game, the festive occasion felt like it was bigger than the game itself, and UCF would be a winner no matter what the scoreboard said.
Wrong.
When you blow a lead like this in a game of this magnitude, it absolutely ruins the moment. It ruined all of those big plays early in the game — like Johnny Richardson’s 79-yard run on UCF’s very first play; like the 65-yard bomb from Timmy McClain to Javon Baker; like the 87-yard fumble return by Demari Henderson. UCF was up 21-0 after just eight plays.
When UCF was up 35-7 with 8:08 left in the third quarter, many of the fans in the sellout crowd already had already left (shame on them) and I was just putting the finishing touches on my column lauding the Knights for such a dominant performance.
“As far as celebrations go,” I had written, “this was about as good as it gets. The only way it would have been better is if Taylor Swift had been in a luxury suite cheering on the Knights.”
Control-Alt-Delete.
As it turns out, if Taylor Swift had been there Saturday, she would have broken up with the Knights afterward and then written an empowering hit song about it.
This was supposed to be a time for UCF teams and fans — past and present — to celebrate and commemorate. For fans, this was a program–defining moment — watching their team play its home opener in a Power 5 conference — they had dreamed of since UCF started playing football in 1979.
It was supposed to be a celebratory moment for the very first Division III UCF team that played the school’s inaugural game in a driving rainstorm in a cow pasture at St. Leo College. It was supposed to be a celebratory moment for the 2017 UCF team that finished unbeaten and never got a sniff of the College Football Playoff because it wasn’t in a Power 5 league.
And it was certainly supposed to be a celebratory moment for the 2013 UCF team that was honored on Saturday on the 10-year anniversary of those Blake Bortles-led Knights dismantling Big 12 champion Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl. That Art Briles-coached Baylor team was a 16½-point favorite and had the highest-scoring team in the history of college football.
However, after UCF beat up the Bears and won the game 52-42, UCF was on the national radar for the first time. That game even put the Knights on the radar of Gus Malzahn, who at the time was preparing his Auburn team for the national championship matchup with FSU in the Rose Bowl.
After the Fiesta Bowl victory, Malzahn — in the back of his mind — put UCF on a list of programs he might like to coach someday. That feeling was solidified four years later when Scott Frost’s undefeated UCF team beat Malzahn’s Auburn team to win former UCF athletic director Danny White’s famous self-proclaimed national championship.
“That Fiesta Bowl win [against Baylor] caught everybody’s attention on the national stage,” Malzahn recalled. “And then in the [2017-18] Peach Bowl, I got a firsthand view of the program. Those two games had a lot to do with my mindset about what can be accomplished at this place.”
Obviously, after this debacle, Malzahn and the 2023 Knights have a lot of soul-searching to do.
“We have to be men about it,” Malzahn said afterward. “The game of football teaches life lessons. We all feel like crap right now and we should feel like crap because we let one get away. But you learn about life and learn about adversity and how you’re going to overcome. We have to overcome it when life hits you like this.”
It was a nightmarish way to end what was supposed to be a dream day. Unfortunately, the feel-good celebration of the 2013 Fiesta Bowl team got derailed by this colossal collapse.
Shaquem Griffin, the legendary UCF player who became a college star and an NFL player despite having his left hand amputated as a child, was a freshman on the 2013 Fiesta Bowl team and a senior on the 2017 Peach Bowl team. He was among the many former players who attended Saturday’s game.
“It just makes you feel good to know you were a part of building a culture of winning,” Griffin said before the game. “This is something we always dreamed about. Now we’re on national display in the Power 5.”
Sadly, the national display on Saturday turned into a monumental meltdown.
The Bounce House Bungle.
Turn out the lights; the party’s over.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on X (formerly Twitter) @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and HD 101.1-2
