For the first time, UCF's national champion outcry is beginning to fall on deaf ears.

Nebraska coach Scott Frost, who led the Knights to a perfect record last season in the American Athletic Conference before taking his entire coaching staff to Lincoln, told USA Today the Knights are not national champions despite being last season's only unbeaten in college football.

"I completely get behind their argument," Frost told USA Today Sports. "I do think it was almost criminal how low they kept UCF in the rankings, and I think it was intentional. But at the end of the day, the playoff system is that the national champion is the team that wins the playoff.

"All I'll say is if we had stayed there, I would have had a hard time getting behind it. I think it was smart by them, because it has kept UCF in the media and in the conversation. But you know, like our rings, I kind of wish my ring just said 'Undefeated Season' and 'Peach Bowl Champion.' "

Frost's admission echoes what Huskers assistant and former UCF coach Troy Walters said on social media last month.

"Personally and professionally speaking, I am a national champion when I win the National championship game," Walters tweeted. "I wish we could have had this opportunity because we were playing at a high level. If someone else wants to proclaim and pay me as a national champion, then that’s on them."

UCF pushed it to the extreme with multiple championship parades, banners and signage, and even paid its assistants national championship contract bonuses, to which Walters alludes to in his tweet.

"There’s a compelling case that our team deserves to be national champions absent a system, an expanded playoff, that truly decides it on the field," UCF athletic director Danny White told 247Sports in January. "I feel like as a leader and athletic director, it’s my job to always prioritize our student-athletes. I always will. And I’m going to fight for them when appropriate and I feel like it’s appropriate to fight for them right now.”

White estimates January's social media noise from UCF boasting about being the "only unbeaten national champion" created more than 100 million social media impressions nationally and gave the Knights platform to tout their brand to its max.

UCF (13-0) finished No. 4 in the final 2017 AP Poll and garnered four first-place votes. Top-ranked Alabama (13-1), which beat Georgia in overtime in the CFB Playoff National Championship Game, picked up the other 57.