Orlando Sentinel · Oct 18, 2016
Big 12 conference expansion clown car crushes UCF
Take heart, UCF fans. There are good disappointments and bad disappointments.
A bad one is when you send your résumé to Apple and get turned down for a job you coveted. A good one is when you get turned down by Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey.
The circus known as the Big 12 Conference rejected UCF and 10 other hopefuls on Monday. As clownish as the league can be, there's no getting around the fact this one hurts.
It was probably UCF's last best hope to move into a high-rent district. The privileges of membership in a Power 5 conference are so big that the very existence of some schools' athletic aspirations depended on it.