The 2021 season is finally underway. It took a nearly three-hour weather delay to play the game, but the UCF Knights were able to come back from a 24-7 second quarter deficit to defeat the Boise State Broncos 36-31. With this game being on ESPN Thursday night, it garnered a lot of attention and that attention was reflected in the polls.

To help UCF out, we saw a pretty wonky week 1 with ranked Washington losing to FCS Montana, Miami getting beaten soundly by Alabama, Texas defeating Louisiana, and LSU being tripped up by UCLA, among others.

Preseason polls often lead to early upsets due to the nature of the polls themselves, but it gives us all something to talk or complain about.

Associated Press Poll

UCF climbs up to third in receiving votes this week after being 14th on the receiving votes list in the preseason poll. UCF increased their point total from 5 to 61. The 25th ranked team is only 22 points ahead of UCF, which shows that a strong win paired with some key losses this week or next week should be enough to vault the Knights into the top 25.

USA Today Coaches Poll

UCF didn’t move up, but they garnered more votes in the poll. In the preseason poll, UCF had 29 votes and was ninth on the receiving votes list. They’re still ninth but now have 48 votes. Boise State had 27 votes in the preseason poll and now is not receiving any votes.

Why does this matter?

The vote in the coaches poll is starting to crash down. In the preseason poll, all teams ranked 21st and up received over 400 points. Now, all teams ranked 16th and up are over 400 points.

UCF hosts SWAC member Bethune-Cookman (0-1) this Saturday at 6:30pm.