I’ve written more than one piece as a member of Blue HQ Media’s Sports Media Pass on the genius of the UCF Athletic Director Danny White. When the 2017 co-National NCAA Football Champions concluded their undefeated campaign as victors in the 2017 Peach Bowl over the Auburn Tigers, White used three words that cast forth a movement for the Knights program.

From there, the hype and hate spewed for months on social media and sports media alike. Famous college football commentators like Paul Finebaum, Kirk Herbstreit, and Joel Klatt all cursed the football gods in infamy having to constantly endure the “UCF Twitter Mafia” even to this day as the Knights and their fans campaign hard for a fair shake.

And as the critics and haters within the mainstream media tried to resist, they found themselves sinking into the quicksand. As they used their platforms to denounce UCF’s national championship claims and hopes during the past two seasons, the more they were feeding the swell of publicity of Knights program into the limelight.

Then on October 20th, the panel of the popular ESPN weekly college football preview show, College Gameday opted to bash UCF after completing a 20th straight victory over the Pirates of East Carolina. Herbstreit, the prominent member of the show’s panel pointed out how he thought Fresno State, Utah State, and Appalachian State were “more deserving” of College Football Playoff contention than UCF.

Kirk Herbstreit suggests App may be more deserving of making the College Football Playoff than UCF pic.twitter.com/zx4BgjtzCJ — #25 Barstool ‘Neers (@NeersBarstool) October 20, 2018

Days removed from that, it was Fox Sports College Football Analyst Joel Klatt who took his shots at UCF in their campaign for CFP recognition. Klatt’s criticism could be argued as even more condescending than Herbstreit’s take as he wondered whether North Dakota State, an FCS team, was a more worthy of the College Football Playoff candidate than the Knights.

Regardless of if you think these analysts are ridiculous or on point, no matter if you think these personalities are actually sipping from “Kool-Aid” or click-baiting, there’s a coincidence I can’t help but spot. UCF’s Bye Week is the Saturday following both of these “hot takes”. And in a similar fashion as Danny White declaring, “Nation Champions . . . Undefeated”, ESPN and Fox’s personalities are meaning to stir up the UCF fan hype so that their numbers don’t diminish while UCF is off as a team in an active 20-win streak.

Maybe that’s nothing more than a conspiracy theory, but let’s just say there’s more chance of theory being true than UCF actually making the College Football Playoffs.

Kyle Nash, known as The Student of the Game, covers UCF Football for SportsMediaPass.com and is a special contributor for Break the Fourth. He’s a also a writer for the DolphinsWire of USA Today and co-host of the DinnerTime and Default Assault podcasts.