CINCINNATI, Ohio — The sky over Cincinnati in the final minutes of daylight on Friday, Nov. 12, was strangely compelling. A heavy canopy of leaden clouds covered the top of the horizon. A thinner layer hovered closer to the ground. And in between was a ribbon of blue sky, with the sunset slanting through to bathe the hillsides that surround the city in a golden, late-autumn glow.
It didn’t last long. But it was worth savoring.
Driving into town from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, this tableau vivant was a metaphorically apt visual for the Cincinnati Bearcats, who were about to kick off against South Florida in Tampa. There is a seemingly impenetrable Power 5 conference impediment above Cincinnati in the College Football Playoff rankings, a looming threat below in the form of more Power 5 pursuers, and the fleeting sweet spot between those two ominous layers where the team currently resides.
Inside the Holy Grail downtown, a restaurant right across the street from Great American Ballpark, Drew Young has parked himself at the bar directly in front of one of the many TVs showing the Bearcats game. There are long tables in the main area filled with boisterous Cincinnati fans, but Young is off to the side and in his own world. He isn’t here to chat. He is here to sip a beer and absorb the football.
The game does not begin well for the Bearcats. A lousy USF team scores first. A Cincinnati sack results in a fumble, but a botched attempt at a scoop and score returns possession to the Bulls. That prompts Young to yell at the TV, “F—— fall on the ball!”
It isn’t until the middle of the second quarter that Cincinnati takes the lead. After quarterback Desmond Ridder scores from 13 yards out to make it 14–7, Young takes off his jacket and starts to relax. When they score again four minutes later, Young gets up for the first time, visits the restroom, then orders a second beer. It’s going to be O.K.
Cincinnati would go on to win comfortably, if not impressively. Good enough to stay on the hunt.
“It’s been awesome,” says Young, who is in his early 40s and has two engineering degrees from the school. “I was able to let go of the playoff nonsense early and enjoy each game. I stopped watching the playoff rankings show after the first one. We’ve had a lot of disappointments. Over time you learn there’s stuff you can’t control.”
Twelve days later, the playoff picture is less nonsensical.
After nearly two full seasons of CFP selection committee snubbing, the Bearcats finally were granted access to The Club on Tuesday night. Cincinnati has been undefeated for all nine of the CFP’s rankings last year and this year, but it wasn’t until the ninth of those that it was deemed worthy of a spot in the top four. This is the highest ranking in the eight-year history of the playoff for a Group of 5 conference team, and yet it means nothing if the team stumbles Friday against East Carolina or next week in the American Athletic Conference championship game against Houston.
For now, Southeastern Conference titans Georgia and Alabama remain above the Bearcats. So does in-state behemoth Ohio State—“That crappy school up I-71,” says Young—which owns the state outside Hamilton County and a fair amount of the allegiance within the Cincinnati city limits, too. Behind Cincinnati, a one-loss Big 12 champion (Oklahoma State or Oklahoma) could potentially snatch a bid away. With two rankings to go, it’s tantalizingly close but not yet within its grasp. Things can happen.
Thus far, Young and much of the rest of the Bearcat faithful seem to be staying in this rare golden hour: living in the sunlit present, without skipping ahead to what might happen in December or beyond, to future Big 12 membership; being loud and proud, and trying not to worry about the head coach’s potential job offers or what happens each week in a boardroom in Grapevine, Texas.
“If that message is getting through to the fans, that’s great,” Bearcats coach Luke Fickell told . “I don’t get out much, so I don’t know what it’s like out there. But it’s getting through to our team. We just want to stay together.”
In a sport that rewards privilege and protects the powerful, Cincinnati is the common man’s insurgent. An idea spawned on this urban campus in the early 20th century became a guiding principle of the university: cooperative education, the forerunner of internships and other work-study programs, which placed students in jobs while they were still in school to help pay bills and gain real-world experience in their majors. This empowered generations of working-class students to aim for an education that otherwise might have been out of their grasp.
Today, the work-your-way-up concept that engineering dean Herman Schneider conceived in 1906 is embodied in an undefeated football team.
