Gus Malzahn! Not the guy I, at least, expected for UCF. But a good hire. Because Gus Malzahn is a good coach.
Malzahn was rarely dominant as the head coach at Auburn. Even in that 2013 season, the one where they made the national championship and lost to Florida State, the Tigers didn’t dominate the SEC. They won multiple games within the last minute. They lost by two scores at LSU. A .500 Washington State team gave them trouble at home.
But Malzahn was never bad. His teams always finished with winning records. His recruiting classes were always in the top half of the SEC. And while neither of those things was all that different from most of Auburn’s last few decades of history, that’s still an impressive track record. Malzahn had his ups and downs, but the aggregate was that he took a program that had been successful and kept it successful. He didn’t take it to the next step. But it didn’t backslide. And one could argue, given his better consistency than his predecessors and the continued difficulty of contending in the Southeastern Conference, that he took it maybe a half-step forward, because a half-step was necessary to maintain similar results.
If Malzahn can just do this with UCF, he should be a success. A half-step forward for the Knights would involve keeping pace with Cincinnati and Memphis, and little more. Do that, keep bringing fans in the door, and you’ve got yourself one of the top contenders for a non-Pac-12 Power Five spot the next time realignment rolls around, which is said to be a big goal in Orlando.
UCF could’ve taken a shot and tried to get a great coach. Instead, they took one they can be confident will be good. At this stage in UCF’s history, and at this stage in Gus Malzahn’s career, that should be enough.
