Powering through
Bearcats look to prove they belong in playoff discussion
Cincinnati (3-0), the No. 7 team in the country, will face the ninthranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish (4-0) Saturday, and the day before one of the most important football games Cincinnati has ever played — the first top-10, regular-season matchup ever for the Bearcats — the team did a little sightseeing.
With the team hotel in South Bend, Indiana, just minutes away from the stadium, coach Luke Fickell said the plan was to let the players get a good look at “Touchdown Jesus,” take a few pictures and soak in one of the most storied venues in college football. It’s not exactly coach Norman Dale having his players measure the height of the basket before the state championship game in the movie “Hoosiers,” but the idea was similar.
“When you go over there on Saturday you want them focused on the things they got to do,” Fickell said. “It’s already going to be difficult enough to not have any of those other distractions.” Cincinnati has a team that could be the first from outside the Power Five conferences to make the College Football Playoff. It is, without question, a long shot that would require more than a few things to break the Bearcats’ way.
September has worked out pretty well on that front. Perennial playoff contenders No. 11 Ohio State and No. 25 Clemson have lost a combined three games. No. 6 Oklahoma has looked vulnerable in the Big 12.
Cincinnati is going to need some chaos in the Power Five conferences to have any chance to pull this off, but 25 ranked teams losing over the first four weeks of the season suggests the next couple of months could get weird.
Of course, all that is moot if Cincinnati doesn’t win all its games, and Saturday’s against the Fighting Irish might be the toughest.
Fickell and his team are trying to both embrace the enormity of the opportunity and stick to business as usual.
“It’s big. We’re not going to lie to you,” Fickell said. “But like I said once the thing kicks off, you can’t let all the emotions of all that different stuff that’s going on affect how you go about things.”
There is no blueprint for a team from a so-called Group of Five conference to make the playoff because in seven years of the CFP, it has never come close to happening.
In theory, though, to break the glass ceiling, a team would need to have built up its bona fides in preceding seasons.
Cincinnati has checked that box, going 31-6 over the previous three years under Fickell, the former Ohio State linebacker and assistant coach.
The Bearcats won the American Athletic Conference and played Georgia in the Sugar Bowl last season, losing on a long field goal in the closing seconds.
Returning most of the key players from that team, including star quarterback Desmond Ridder, Cincinnati started this season ranked No. 8 in the AP poll.
The next step is to have tough nonconference schedule. It looked as if the Bearcats could check that box, too, with Indiana and Notre Dame. The Hoosiers are unranked now having lost twice, so it remains to be seen if they will help out Cincinnati by bouncing back and having a quality season.
The Irish were far from perfect in September, but the team’s record is still spotless as they enter October. And while Notre Dame has had some highprofile postseason flameouts recently, the list of programs with a better winning percentage (.881) over the last three-plus seasons is impressive: Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State.
When Fickell calls Notre Dame a topfive program, he’s not talking about ancient history and the days of Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy and Ara Parseghian. He’s talking about Brian Kelly’s Fighting Irish.
“It is definitely a measuring stick (game),” Fickell said.
Familiar faces
Much has been made this week about how Notre Dame defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman will be facing his close friend Fickell and many of the players he coached before leaving Cincinnati for the Irish after last season.
Kelly will also be facing a former coordinator. Cincinnati offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock was at Notre Dame from 2010-16. After a 4-8 season, Kelly turned over much of his staff, including Denbrock. He also worked for Kelly at Division II Grand Valley State in the 1990s.
“We’re great friends and we stay in constant contact, but we’re great competitors, too,” Kelly said. “He wants to beat us and I want to beat him, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Coan’s status
Kelly said Thursday that quarterback Jack Coan, who left last week’s victory against Wisconsin in the third quarter with an ankle injury, was ahead in his recovery of where the staff thought he would be. He split first-team reps in practice with Drew Pyne early in the week.