Bearcats attempt to tune out the noise with Tulsa up next
The noise CINCINNATI — around the University of Cincinnati football program just keeps getting louder.
Added to the Nippert Stadium cacophony this week was the sound of crews building the ESPN “College Gameday” set, the site for the cable network’s weekly Saturday morning extravaganza that this week originated from nearby the iconic home of the Bearcats before their American Athletic Confer- ence homecoming matchup with Tulsa (3-5, 2-2).
The clamor grew even louder Tuesday night after the first College Football Playoff rankings were revealed, also on ESPN. Cincinnati, 8-0 overall and 4-0 in the AAC and ranked second in both the Associated Press and USA Today coaches polls, opened the five-week process rated at No. 6 by the 13-member committee.
The teams ranked among the top four at the end of the process qualify for the playoffs. The Bearcats currently compete in what’s known as the Group of Five, a tier below the so-called Power Five. No Group of Five team has reached the top four in the rankings, never mind making the final four. Unde- feated Georgia topped the committee’s rankings, followed by 7-1 Alabama, 8-0 Michigan State and 7-1 Oregon and Ohio State.
One of Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell’s current jobs is to help his players get past the noise and focus on the task at hand, which this week is over- coming a Golden Hurricane team the Bearcats squeezed past by three points in last season’s AAC championship game at Nippert.
During Cincinnati’s weekly media session Tuesday before the rankings were released, Fickell described it as “letting your mind rest.” He urges his players to put their cellphones down and stay off social media for a while.
“They’re going to have energy to play,” Fickell said. “Can they keep their mind fresh? Let their minds rest in some ways. Just set their phone down at 10 o’clock at night.
“When you walk in the building (for practice or a lifting session), challenge yourself to put it down and don’t pick it back up until you’re leaving.
“Some way, somehow, give your mind a break. If you continue to ingest it all, it will wear you out.”
Fickell is not immune to the challenge. He figured somebody from his family, probably one of his children, would alert him to the CFP committee’s rankings while he was doing his live weekly radio show Tuesday night.
“What show?” he said jokingly when asked about the upcoming CFP rankings-production.
What he was more concerned about was keeping the Bearcats on track after what many observers considered to be back-to-back lackluster road wins, 27-20 at Navy and 31-12 at Tulane. Both opponents had one win going into the games, and Cincinnati was considered to have underperformed.
Fifth-year senior quarterback Desmond Ridder said the observations weren’t com- ing from just outside the program.
“You look at the last couple games,” Ridder said. “We’re supposed to be blowing these teams out and putting up big numbers on the scoreboard. We like to say a win’s a win, found a way to win.
“That’s what we do. You look (at) 31-12 or whatever it was and (people) should be excited about that and people were, don’t get me wrong, but there’s just a different vibe coming in here on Saturday night riding back on the bus or coming in here on Sunday morning.
“Obviously, we’re excited to win, and we’re grateful to win. I don’t think people are necessarily hearing it from the outside media (that) you should have put up 50, 60 points. Rather it’s coming from ourselves. We know we could play that much better, and we know the score should have been (more lopsided), and it wasn’t.”
After two consecutive road games, Fickell was looking forward to returning to the raucous Nippert atmosphere, which is expected to be much different from the experience of last season’s AAC championship game, when pandemic protocols limited the crowd to 5,831 in the venerable 37,000-seat facility. What he didn’t want for his players was to succumb to the expectations of outsiders,
“Don’t let it change who you are and how you do things,” Fickell said. “Pressure is what you apply to yourself. We can’t let somebody outside of here tell us what we should be.”