The dream matchup may never come to fruition, but based on his own personal eye test, ESPN color commentator Andre Ware says Alabama and UCF are clearly the two best teams he has seen in college football this season.

During the fourth quarter of UCF's win over SMU on Saturday, Ware was asked by his co-analyst how the Knights stack up to some of the nation's other elites based on who he has seen in-person this fall.

“Right behind Alabama, without a doubt,” Ware said. "Because of the speed and the way they play defense. The speed is hard to track. That’s going to give anybody problems. It’s the interior parts of this football team that you get enamored with.”

UCF owns the nation's longest winning streak at 18 games and hasn't been challenged yet this season despite a coaching staff overhaul following last year's unbeaten campaign. The Knights moved to No. 10 in Sunday's AP Poll, an interesting development to watch considering the Knights were unbeaten and ranked 22nd at this point of the season last fall.

However, all that matters is how the College Football Playoff selection committee views UCF and its dominance in the American Athletic Conference. The first Playoff Top 25 will be released later this month and by that time, the Knights could be 7-0 with additional wins over Memphis and East Carolina.

Alabama coach Nick Saban voiced his opinion on UCF's claimed national title earlier this year saying the proper national champion was crowned in Atlanta.

“If you honor and respect the system that we have, (despite) some of the imperfections that you understand that the system has, then you wouldn’t do something out of respect for the system that we have,” Saban told USA TODAY Sports. “I guess anybody has the prerogative to claim anything. But self-proclaimed is not the same as actually earning it.

“And there’s probably a significant number of people who don’t respect people who make self-proclaimed sort of accolades for themselves.”

Alabama has one win over a team currently ranked inside the Top 25 — Texas A&M — but does have an impressive stretch during the final month of the season with showdowns vs. nationally-ranked Mississippi State, LSU and Auburn.

UCF could benefit from beating a pair of Top 25 teams if current unbeatens Cincinnati and USF keep winning prior to their head-to-head showdown on Nov. 10. The Knights play both the Bearcats and Bulls over the final two regular-season contests.

If anything, an Alabama-UCF matchup would pit two elite-level quarterbacks in a matchup that would draw much attention considering the back-and-forth buzz that's been generated by hypotheticals since the Knights' win over Auburn in the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

“We’ve only had one undefeated team, and that is really hard to do,” Saban said. “So, I have a tremendous amount of respect for their team and what they were able to accomplish. And they can make every claim that they should have been in the playoff. I get that. But we have a system, and it’s not fair to the people who went through the system and earned their way playing really, really good teams -- I mean really good teams -- and really tough games.

"It’s not quite fair to them for somebody else just to decide to (claim a national championship)."