Throwdown with Andy and Erika

Will the Knights win another C-USA championship and repeat as Liberty champions? Or will they do more?

Andy Zunz: Despite all of the buzz, hype, wishful thinking, whatever you want to call it around UCF and a potential conference upgrade, one thing is for sure: This team needs to win in Conference USA. That means winning boring old conference games is more crucial than the sexy games such as Boston College or Brigham Young.

Erika Esola: Who said conference matchups like those against Memphis and UAB are boring? If all goes to plan, it should be pretty fun to see UCF beat their C-USA opponents by double-digit scores. If the Knights can't win the easy C-USA games, they don't deserve to be a top-25 team. Plain and simple. If the Knights want to be considered to be the next TCU and play in a BCS bowl (like Jeff Godfrey was talking about on media day), they need to go undefeated and run the table. Convincing wins against BC and BYU will help.

AZ: We both can agree that the team needs to win every game possible, but I'm saying UCF can benefit more from sweeping its conference schedule than its non-conference schedule. Take a look at last year, for instance. UCF went 11-3, beat Georgia in a bowl game and won the C-USA championship. All of this happened after losing its two critical out-of-conference match ups against Kansas State and NC State. Now, imagine if UCF had won those two match ups but lost two in-conference games instead. Same amount of losses, much less-impressive outcome.

EE: But does UCF really just want another Liberty Bowl win again? Sure, last season was great, but how far will UCF get if it keeps winning the Liberty Bowl every year? To go to bigger and better places, the Knights either have to make a jump to a BCS conference or go undefeated against their cake-walk of a C-USA schedule.

AZ: It's great to be ambitious, but I'll take another 2010. Although it may not be as immediately gratifying as an undefeated season, another double-digit win year is just what UCF as a program needs. Consistent winning will eventually turn heads whether they are conference commissioners or local recruits. There's no doubt UCF could benefit from beefing up the schedule a little bit, but for now the program needs to make winning consistent.