UCF looking to establish home field advantage

The big announcement coming from UCF this summer had little to do with what was on the football field. It had more to do with what was going on off it.

The reaction was mixed to the beach bar that will be added in this year. Its debut will be Thursday along with UCF and its opener against FIU.

The Knights probably will not notice the people eating their 4Rivers up in that bar or lounging around. The aesthetics of the game do not matter so much as long as they create noise and create the kind of atmosphere the Knights want to build.

And a lot of the atmosphere is built by one thing — winning.

In that respect, UCF has seemingly established Bright House Networks Stadium as a place to fear. UCF has not lost a home conference game since 2011 against Tulsa. The Knights have not lost at home at all since the three-point loss to the Gamecocks in 2013.

Overall, UCF is 26-5 in the last five years at Bright House Networks Stadium. The Knights are 40-11 all time at Bright House Networks Stadium, the seventh highest win percentage among active facilities.

Particularly with the young team the Knights have this year with some position groups trying to reload, winning at home is going to become absolutely critical for the team’s success and growing confidence.

“As a football player, you take pride in playing at home. You feed off the excitement of fans and you never want to let your fans down, you never want to let your team down,” senior center Joey Grant told Shannon Green of the Orlando Sentinel. “Anytime you get a chance to come out at home, the excitement is always amazing. People are bouncing around, you hear the Zombie Nation and you always want to protect your house and we have a pretty good record at home. And as seniors we want to carry that on and we play with intensity, we play with excitement and anytime you do that, good things on the field are gonna happen.”

The way the schedule works out this year, the Knights will not have much of an opportunity to build confidence at home early in the season. UCF has only two home games in the first five games of the season — Thursday’s opener against FIU and Week Three tilt against Furman. Between those games are the trips to Stanford and South Carolina before AAC play starts.

The rest of the home schedule includes Connecticut, Houston, East Carolina and the Black Friday battle with USF. These are all winnable games and it is pretty easy to foresee UCF remaining undefeated at Bright House Networks Stadium.

But the game against Connecticut will have its ups and downs as it did last year (plus that “rivalry” kick) and Houston and East Carolina have played UCF notoriously tough the last two seasons when UCF was playing at its absolute best.

The Knights have some reloading to do though and so a cake walk is nothing that they should expect. All the toughest games on the schedule though are on the road — Temple, Cincinnati plus Stanford and South Carolina. UCF should expect to continue establishing its home dominance.

The home schedule is going to help balance this team out in the end. With the way the schedule may set up, the opportunity to gain confidence is going to have to come from the comforts of home and the crowd support UCF builds. There could be some rocky games to start the season and little relief at Bright House Networks Stadium until the end of the season.

To win a third straight AAC title, UCF will have to take care of business at home. Luckily it seems the Knights have built that home field advantage there.