First, did you watch any UCF games last year besides the Fiesta Bowl? They looked great in the Fiesta Bowl, and that game alone might carry them for a couple of years. But look at their 2013 schedule. Props to them for winning most of them, with their lone loss in 2013 came at home in a close game vs a tough South Carolina team, and they beat a good Louisville team and a decent Penn State team. But vs BAD teams like SMU (5-7), South Florida (2-10), Temple (2-10), Memphis (3-9) they were barely able to escape. Here is their 2013 schedule:

vs Akron W 38-7
@ FIU W 38-0
@ Penn State W 34-31 (PSU finished 7-5 with losses to Indiana and Minnesota as well as UCF)
vs #12 South Carolina L 28-25
@ Memphis W 24-17 (Finished 3-9 with losses to Middle Tenn State, Temple, and were ROUTED by UCONN)
@ #8 Louisville W 38-35
vs Connecticut W 62-17
vs Houston W 19-14
@ Temple W 39-36 (Finished 2-10 with wins coming from Army and Memphis, lost the rest)
vs Rutgers W 41-17
vs South Florida W 23-20 (Finished 2-10 and were routed 53-21 at home against McNeese State)
@ SMU W 17-13 (Finished 5-7)
vs #6 Baylor W 52-42

The point is, if you dig in to their schedule, a few bounces and they are barely bowl eligible. Even with their scary Florida talent (by the way, look at South Florida and see what they're doing with scary Florida talent. They were the flash in the pan not long ago too.). And UCF is hardly an upstart, any more than Hawaii was an upstart the year they went to the Sugar Bowl. George O'Leary has been there 10 years (the same guy that said he played 3 years of college football and when it came to light that he hadn't played in 1 game was fired from ND without coaching a game there). He's had a mix of 10+ win seasons and 4-5 win seasons. He's made them respectable, but his trend as a coach is to follow up a 10 or 11 win season with a 4 or 5 win season (this happened in '07-'08 and '10-'11). They've strung together a couple of 10+ win seasons, but just lost their starting QB and RB that got them there. They are starting from scratch again and won't be great. They certainly aren't Florida State or even Florida or Miami in terms of plugging in guys and continuing to win.

The other thing that I disagree with from your post is the whole "past performances is no guarantee of future results" line. It seems that you're only applying that to BYU but not to UCF. When looking at college football, what happened last year and what carries over to this year is really everything. And BYU has a TON of proven talent coming back. UCF is losing a ton of talent this year. By your logic, New Mexico State has an equal shot of winning the National Championship as Alabama at the start of the year. While technically it may be correct, it certainly isn't logical.

Throw in the way that we handled them in the 6th fan competition and this isn't even going to be a game!