It’s name alone fails to strike fear into college football fans. It doesn’t have the cache of multiple national championships or of an annual BCS participant.
Yet Oklahoma is talking about Cincinnati in those terms.
“I think the success they’re having overall makes everybody pay attention,” OU coach Bob Stoops said.
The fourth-ranked Sooners (1-0) face the Bearcats (1-0) at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Owen Field. It could very well be the marquee game of the non-conference schedule.
Cincinnati has become one of the best programs in the Big East. Two bowl victories and 18 wins the last two seasons proves how far the Bearcats have come.
Now Cincinnati wants to take the next step. The Bearcats want to become a known quantity by name. Beating the Sooners might get them there.
“That’s why we took the game on,” Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly said about facing OU. “We took the game on knowing that this was a team that was going to compete for a national championship. We knew last year when we were putting this together that Sam Bradford was a freshman quarterback and they had the pieces around him.
“Clearly we could have said no thanks, we’ll stay and play someone else but we wanted to take this game knowing those were the circumstances going into this football game. It doesn’t surprise me; we should be an underdog in that sense. Oklahoma has proven it a lot longer than the University of Cincinnati has, so that doesn’t surprise me.”
The Bearcats have a lot of pieces. Much of the offeseason discussion centered around last season’s starting quarterback — Ben Mauk — and his quest for a sixth year of eligibility. Mauk’s absence was a big reason Cincinnati began the season outside the polls. Mauk threw for 31 touchdowns and 3,121 yards last year, leading Cincinnati to 10 wins and a No. 17 final ranking.
It overshadowed the fact Dustin Grutza threw for 290 yards in his only start last season and lit Eastern Kentucky up for 296 yards and three touchdowns last week.
One way the Bearcats have been able to build themselves up is by keeping veteran players around. Grutza is one of 14 seniors in the Bearcats’ two-deep.
Leading receiver Dominick Goodman is a senior, so is Marshawn Gilyard, who yanked down two touchdowns last week. The defense was one of the best in the Big East last season and has just about everybody back.
That experience was the first thing that caught the eye of OU’s coaching staff.
“They have players. They’re going to be stout. They’re going to be experienced and they’re going to be strong,” OU offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson said.
Still the Bearcats will walk onto to Owen Field as a three-touchdown underdog. A victory would be an upset bigger than any during the first week of the season.
Think it can’t happen? The Bearcats took West Virginia down to the final whistle last season. OU’s matchup with the Mountaineers was over long before that.
The Bearcats took notice.
“Watching the Fiesta Bowl game against West Virginia last year, (West Virginia) showed a lot of their weaknesses and hopefully we can go out there and do the same thing that they did,” Goodman said.
John Shinn
366-3536
jshinn@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
Bearcats are for real
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