Each Thursday until the 2018 UCF Football season gets underway, Knight Sports Now will have a little fun with Throwback Thursdays. Every week, we’ll take a look at the Knights’ best game in each of their years competing at the FBS level. This week, we continue with 1999.
UCF Football’s Best Game of 1999: 24-23 loss to No. 11 Georgia
1999 was a transitional year for the Knights. In the first season of the post-Culpepper era, UCF found itself in a hole early on after playing four straight ranked opponents to start the year.
The Knights went 0-4 in those games, but while their contest against Georgia may have gone down in the record books as a loss, fans from the time remember the only thing that kept UCF from a win was the SEC referees.
Down by just one point with a minute to go, the Knights were able to get into field goal range, with a great chance to win their first ever game against an SEC opponent. UCF chose to run one more play before taking the field goal, and the result was one of the most controversial calls in the team’s history.
A Knights receiver was tackled out of bounds by a Georgia defender – and the refs inexplicably called offensive pass interference on UCF. That penalty pushed the Knights out of field goal range, turning what should have been an all-time win into a narrow loss.
UCF was not able to recover their season and went on to finish with a 4-7 record. It would be more than a decade before the Knights finally got to avenge that controversial loss.
To check out previous Throwback Thursdays from Knight Sports Now, click here.
