Cincinnati in big mix
Becomes first to break Power Five mold; now Alabama in its cross-hairs
IRVING, Texas — As college football’s postseason evolved from disconnected bowls to the Bowl Championship Series to the current College Football Playoff four-team playoff, it never truly embraced the underdog the way the NCAA tournament does.
From Tulane to Utah, Boise State to TCU and then UCF, the upstarts occasionally got a chance to play a blue blood in a big bowl game, but they never entered the postseason with a legitimate opportunity to win a national championship.
College football finally has its first Cinderella team: Cincinnati has broken the glass ceiling.
The Bearcats will play Alabama in the Cotton Bowl Classic on New Year’s Eve after being selected Sunday to the College Football Playoff. Michigan will face Georgia in the Orange Bowl semifinal Dec. 31 and the winners will play for the national championship Jan. 10 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Fourth-seeded Cincinnati is the first team to reach the CFP from a non-Power Five conference in the eight-year history of this postseason format. The Bearcats (13-0) won the American Athletic Conference and head into the postseason as the only unbeaten team in the country.
“It’s an historic day. It really is. In the world of sports, this is history,” AAC commissioner Mike Aresco said. “This is something probably many, many people never thought they would see.”
Previously, no team from a so-called Group of Five conferences had ever even come close to making the playoff.
“We don’t want to carry the flag for the non- big schools, so to speak, we just want to be us,” Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell said.
When the Bowl Championship Series started in 1998, Tulane went unbeaten in Conference USA and didn’t even get a spot in one of the glitzy bowl games. Former Tulane president Scott Cowen was among the first to attack the BCS as an exclusionary cartel.
Under then-coach Urban Meyer, Utah went unbeaten as a member of the Mountain West in 2004 and reached the Fiesta Bowl, but only got to play a so-so Pitt team, meaning the Utes had no shot to finish No. 1.
Boise State created a brand out of being a potential BCS buster during its time in the Western Athletic Conference, winning a remarkable Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma in 2007. TCU was in the Mountain West when it won a Rose Bowl against Wisconsin in 2010.
Utah and TCU ended up getting scooped up by Power Five conferences. If you can’t beat them, ask them to join with you.
The playoff doubled the number of teams that had a chance to win the national title from two to four in 2014, but it didn’t seem to help the little guys.
UCF won 25 consecutive games over 2017 and 2018 and never did better than eighth in the selection committee’s rankings. The Knights went so far as to declare themselves national champions after they were the only team in major college football to finish the 2017 season unbeaten.
Cincinnati set the foundation for this year’s run by going unbeaten in the regular season last year before losing to Georgia on a late field in the Peach Bowl.
Aresco conceded this run has felt bitter sweet at times for him. Cincinnati, along with UCF and Houston, will be leaving the American for the Big 12 soon.
“This will be a real challenge for us in every way, shape and form,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said.