Cincinnati 1st Cinderella
Bearcats to face Alabama; Michigan to play Georgia
IRVING, TEXAS» As college football’s postseason evolved from disconnected bowls to the BCS to the current 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 on New Year’s Eve after being selected to the College Football Playoff on Sunday. Michigan will face Georgia in the Orange Bowl semifinal on Dec. 31 and the winners will play for the national championship on Jan. 10 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 conference 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.
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.
The Bearcats made history with little debate. Playoff selection committee chairman Gary Barta said there was strong consensus for Cincinnati at No. 4 ahead of No. 5 Notre Dame, which had only one loss — at home against the Bearcats in early October. Ohio State finished sixth.
“This will be a real challenge for us in every way, shape and form,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said.
The Bearcats might not have been so comfortably in the field had things gone differently at the Big 12 championship game Saturday. Oklahoma State, which was No. 5 in the CFP rankings going into the game, came up inches short of scoring a go-ahead touchdown in the final minute of its loss to Baylor.