Editor’s note: This commentary has been updated to show UCF’s nonconference games were Florida International, Austin Peay, and Maryland. The game vs. Cincinnati was an American Athletic Conference game for the Knights.

Hey, Central Florida Knights, you just declared yourself the national champions of the 2017 college football season, what are you going to do next?

Yep, you guessed it.

In what some might call the biggest fantasy since Peter Pan, they went to Disney World ... for a championship parade.

UCF athletic director Danny White knows a publicity coup when he sees one, and so there were the Knights — left in the playoff cold but the only undefeated team in the land — strutting through the Magic Kingdom on Sunday. The little team that could has gone all-in on the title claim. Parades. Banners. It is even paying coaches their national championship bonuses.

A couple thoughts here.

Good for them.

Now, when’s Toledo’s parade?

With schools from outside the power-conference monopoly apparently now in the business of claiming championships, what better time for Toledo to join the fun and rewrite its own magical past?

We’re talking, of course, about the wizardry of Chuck Ealey and the Rockets’ 35-0 run from 1969-71 — a winning streak still untouched in Division I football during the past six decades.

Three-time national champions has a nice ring, no?

I asked Ealey if he thinks Toledo has a case.

“I’m not sure of how to answer that,” he said. “I guess we always felt we were national champions. Others thought different.”

He playfully added: “UCF just has to rely on alternative facts.”

And what is the history of college football without alternative facts?

Imagining and then claiming national titles — often years after the fact — is college football’s oldest tradition.

Really.

Long before New Jersey led the nation in toxic waste dumps — 108 — it was No. 1 in football. In 1869, Rutgers beat the College of New Jersey — now Princeton — 6-4 in the first American football game, then Princeton won a rematch the next week. Thus, the only two schools that fielded teams that season finished 1-1 and shared the national title. Princeton retroactively was named the champion by the Billingsley Report and the National Championship Foundation, while historian Parke H. Davis appointed the teams co-champions. Rutgers, to this day, pronounces itself the national champs of 1869.

Unfortunately by 1870, there were three teams, and Rutgers no longer stood a chance. But others made sure to honor its heritage with spurious foam-finger claims of their own.

You have to wonder if Alabama coach Nick Saban has looked through his school’s media guide after he brushed off UCF’s pronouncement, saying, “Doesn’t mean anything to anybody but them.”

Among the 16 national title seasons Alabama sells as gospel is 1941. The Crimson Tide went 9-2 that year, with shutout losses to Mississippi State and Vanderbilt and finished 20th — behind four other Southeastern Conference teams — in the AP poll. But darned if a math formula known as the Houlgate System did not spit out the Tide as No. 1, and darned if the school did not go back in the 1980s and claim it.

Back then, before the BCS era began in 1998, the only thing stopping a team from winning it all was its own creativity (and shame). Heck, six teams claimed the title in 1981.

Sure, UCF’s claim will inspire rolled eyes elsewhere. Understandable.

The champion is the winner of Monday night’s playoff title game between Georgia and Alabama. But for better or worse, you can argue UCF has no access to the playoff, it is the system we have. (I’m guessing UCF still will cash the fat checks the playoff generates.)

For what it’s worth, my final AP poll ballot goes like this: 1. Georgia/Bama winner, 2. Georgia/Bama loser, 3. Oklahoma, 4. Ohio State, 5. UCF. The Knights’ bowl victory against an Auburn team that may or may not have showed up was impressive, but sorry, I just can’t get past their schedule, which included a nonconference slate against Florida International, Austin Peay, and Maryland.

Toledo’s legendary teams faced the same questions. Regrettably, those Rockets never got a well-deserved chance to prove themselves against a big-time school. From 1968-71, the MAC champion played the winner of the Southern Conference in the Tangerine Bowl — now the Citrus Bowl — meaning its bowl opponents during the streak were Davidson (7-4), William & Mary (5-7), and Richmond (5-6). The Rockets finished 20th, 12th, and 14th in the final AP polls.

But undefeated is undefeated, and if history is our guide, those special Rockets teams have as much of a case as many others. 

At the least, if Toledo wants a little what-the-hey publicity, it can claim the 1970 national title as the only team that year with a perfect record. I mean, Ohio State and Texas still claim it despite double-digit postseason losses. The more the merrier.

As Ealey noted, alternative facts aren’t just for the big boys.

Contact David Briggs at dbriggs@theblade.com, 419-724-6084, or on Twitter @DBriggsBlade.

First Published January 7, 2018, 10:08 p.m.