University of Central Florida fans were asked by College GameDay staff to take down a hand-made sign of ESPN host Kirk Herbstreit wearing a Knights “National Champions” while the segment broadcasted Saturday morning.

They agreed.

That is, until the fans brought it right back up while Herbstreit began his segment in Jacksonville, alluding to last Saturday’s portrait of the host in Pullman, when he had a hot-take on the Knights with another sign over his shoulder.

“Why are we focusing on just UCF when it comes to the Power 5 because I think there are other teams out there that are as deserving or more deserving?” Herbstreit said during the GameDay segment.

“You need to play somebody in order to be rewarded. UCF, you need to not just be worried about being undefeated and trying to get in the top four, you need to look behind you at teams like Utah State, Appalachian State, Fresno State. These teams, on paper, which is what you want to look at a lot of times, are better than UCF and more deserving than UCF.”

Nevertheless, the UCF-faithful took the opportunity to challenge Herbstreit’s opinion by showing up in Jacksonville, as other universities do on College GameDay. It didn’t help that the lead of Herbstreit’s take – No. 25 Appalachian STATE – suffered a loss to Georgia Southern 14-34.

During the segment, Lee Corso, a long-time GameDay host, pointed out to Herbstreit to look behind at the sign of him in the National Champions hat. The latter replied with “Oh, that’s UCF – they’re the fun guys,” and “They got jokes,” while the hosts laughed at the sign.

A caravan of UCF alumni and fans planned to make the trip until personal, ‘credible threats’ began to show up across social media, deterring the families from participating.

UCF Fans Cancel Bus Trip to College GameDay Amid ‘Credible Threats’

UCF Athletic Director Danny White invited the College GameDay staff to help ‘fix’ and ‘broken model’ while the iron is still hot for the Knights. Read more below:

UCF AD Danny White Invites College GameDay to “join us” in fixing a “broken model”