The fall of the UCF Knights was now quick, but the final nail in the coffin for the team further south just might have been who their head coach was. UCF hired Gus Malzahn back in 2021 after their former head coach, Josh Heupel, left with athletic director Danny White for Tennessee. Malzahn was supposed to come in and bring power conference experience to the Group of Five school and bring them into the Big 12.
Instead, UCF had its worst season since 2016, missing a bowl game for the first time since that same year, and now the program seems to be in shambles. To top it all off, Malzahn chose to jump ship and take the offensive coordinator position at Florida State; however, it seems like the long-time head coach wasn’t going to be sticking around even if the FSU job hadn’t opened up.
In an interview with CBSSports reporter Brandon Marcello, Malzahn admitted that after this past season at UCF, he and his wife were having conversations about retirement, whether it would have been after the season or in a year or two, but then head coach Mike Norvell called, and everything changed…