UCF coach Gus Malzahn talks conference realignment, fall camp and scheduling Florida

The giant video board outside of Gus Malzahn’s office at UCF reads, “The future of college football is here.”

It’s a familiar message the first-year coach has been preaching since his arrival on the Orlando campus in February. And Malzahn’s presence has provided a heightened level of excitement to a program that’s only a couple of years removed from back-to-back conference championships and consecutive appearances in New Year’s Six Access bowl games.

But even in the five short months since Malzahn’s arrival, so much has taken place outside the program, including conference realignment with Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big 12 and the ripple effect it could have on the rest of the sport.

“The landscape of college football is changing completely,” Malzahn said. “You look at the 12-team playoff as we said before; that’s a game-changer for us. There’s no doubt about the name, image and likeness. We’re one of the few schools in the country that’s actually embracing it and then you look at the conference realignment. I don’t know what that’s going to look like but I do know, we’re very attractive, you know, for whatever.

“That’s why it makes this job even that more attractive, even more than it was five months ago. ... The future’s unbelievably bright here and it’s really exciting to be a part of.”

The Orlando Sentinel sat down with Malzahn to discuss the latest about conference realignment, preseason camp, scheduling Florida and NIL. Here is an edited and abbreviated version of that discussion:

You start preseason camp next week. What have you seen from your team this summer?

Gus Malzahn: “Physically, you can tell just walking down the hall that they’re starting to get stronger. You can tell their bodies are changing a little bit. They’ve worked extremely hard. Our strength coach has been very demanding on them. We’re in a good spot going into fall camp just from a team standpoint. But we’re in the process of building our foundation; a foundation that we think will lead to a championship. During that process, you learn a lot but we’re excited to get out there with our guys and see what we can do this year.”

What’s it like having veterans like quarterback Dillon Gabriel helping you through this transition?

Malzahn: “When you get your quarterback back, especially a successful quarterback, it’s a positive. We’ve got the offensive line; they’re all back. I think that’s positive. Most of our defensive line is back. It’s really where it starts but we’ve got a lot of new faces, so we’ll see where we’re at.”

UCF announced future games with Florida and Maryland this week. What does it mean to have those opportunities on the schedule?

Malzahn: “That’s big. I think it’s super for college football. It’s great for the state. I think it’s wonderful and, of course, it’d be really great to have a round-robin with the four teams; that’d be pretty cool too. But this is a start and I think it’ll be a really intriguing matchup come 2024.”

What does it mean for this program to schedule games against Power Five opponents?

Malzahn: “I mean as great and, just to be honest with you, that Power Five, non-Power Five — I don’t look at us as a so-called non-Power five. You see college football, the landscape is changing on a daily basis and when I took this job, I looked at this as a top-20 job. Most coaches around college football would do the same. I think the Power Five, non-Power Five, I think those days are starting to end. This is a program that’s a top-20 program that I inherited and we’re excited to play Maryland. We’re excited to play Florida, and we’ll see what happens in the future.”

It’s been about a month since the name, image and likeness legislation went into effect. What are your early impressions of NIL so far?

Malzahn: “It’s a learning process for everyone; there’s no doubt. We just tried within the rules to educate our guys the best we could. You see a couple of these big schools, there’s a couple of big deals for individuals but we’re a program that’s committed to it and embracing it and we’re there for the long term. I think some of them are just trying to do a wow factor real quick for recruiting. So it’s really different. I think after you get done a full year, you can evaluate the programs that are embracing it and the ones that are just trying to manage it.”

There’s been a lot of discussion about how teams are preparing for the upcoming season in terms of vaccinating players and coaches. What’s been your message to the team about it?

Malzahn: “We’ve done a lot of education with our players as far as from an individual standpoint and then, of course, we gave them the information as far from a team standpoint: what that means, how we’re operating and all that and just tried to give them information where they can make the decision. We’re getting to a point where I think we’re at 70-something percent, so we’ll see what happens.”

This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Matt Murschel at mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com or follow him on Twitter at @osmattmurschel.