UCF shouldn’t be signing any new coaches till we get full membership payouts in 2025-26. He’s been recruiting better and had a couple surprise victories. I’m satisfied with his performance. This will likely be his last deal if he doesn’t start making some NCAA bids soon.

I think it’s a good move for now. Johnny didn’t really crash and burn like a lot of people thought he would. In fact he surpassed all expectations. However, when the expectations are at the floor, then anything mediocre or decent will look good. It wasn’t a great season but it wasn’t a bad one either.
The team fought hard so almost every game was entertaining, despite some random headscratchers. However I’m still not sold on JD long term. His recruiting class for next season, since he finally gets some NIL $, is already great and could be fantastic. I think he gets one more year to showcase what he does with these recruits, and it’s tournament or bust.

Any time you change conferences (something which UCF is as familiar with as any school), you have to adjust to the style of play from the schools in the new conference. Former UCF coach Kirk Speraw had to adjust going from the Atlantic Sun to C-USA. If I remember correctly, Donnie Jones was coaching UCF when we went from C-USA to the American. And now we're in the Big XII. I'm trying to be fair in evaluating Johnny Dawkins' performance this season based on the amount of change that comes with switching conferences.