The 2010s
Sustaining Success
2010 - 2019
On the heels of one of the most transformative ten-year runs in the sport’s history, Cincinnati football was thrown into the 2010s without a head coach, facing a problem that had been the program’s kryptonite: Maintaining success.
Director of Athletics Mike Thomas went to work to find a replacement for the most important coach in Cincinnati’s history. On the list of potential replacements were some of the usual ideas: The interim head coach (Jeff Quinn) and East Carolina’s Skip Holtz. But there was also a fairly obvious choice, and on December 17, Thomas made it.
2010: A Rocky Transition
The Bearcats went back to a Central Michigan program where they found Kelly and this time tapped Butch Jones, who had just led the Chippewas to an 11-2 record and a MAC title, losing their only two games on the road to power conference schools. He’d successfully replaced Brian Kelly once, so why not a second time?
The decade’s first game was played on the decade’s first day. Competing under Quinn, the Bearcats fell to Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators in the Sugar Bowl and the Jones era began in earnest.
When Jones replaced Kelly at CMU in 2007, the transition was fairly seamless. His Chippewas went just 8-6 but dominated the MAC, winning the conference title in a runaway. Yet repeating the hot swap in Cincinnati proved more difficult, largely due to attrition. Stars like Tony Pike and Mardy Gilyard were taken in the 2010 NFL Draft, sending an offense that ranked 4th in scoring in 2009 careening down to the middle of the pack in the 2010 FBS ranks.
Jones’ Bearcats lost the season opener at Fresno State. After a near-upset over 8th-ranked Oklahoma at Paul Brown Stadium to end September, the Bearcats found themselves 0-3 against FBS competition to open the new era––a stark wakeup call after Kelly had won 18 of his final 19. The regime change and roster turnover caught up with the Bearcats. They limped to a 4-8 record, 2-5 in the Big East.
2011: Resurgence and Reform
A three-touchdown loss at Tennessee in Week 2 of the 2011 season felt like much of the same, but a newly motived team led by a host of key players in their final year of eligibility (Zach Collaros, Isaiah Pead, Derek Wolfe) locked in. Cincinnati won six straight games, including pivotal wins over Louisville (at Paul Brown) and top-25 Pittsburgh (on the road). UC was back in the Big East’s driver’s seat with a meeting against preseason favorite West Virginia at Paul Brown up next.
Disaster struck early. While avoiding a pass rush in his own end zone, Collaros was strip-sacked. The Mountaineers recovered the ball for a touchdown to stake themselves to a 17-7 lead and Collaros left the game on a cart. Backup Munchie Legaux steadied the ship and led a comeback, but Cincinnati’s game-tying field goal was blocked on the game’s final play, throwing hopes of a BCS bowl return into jeopardy.
The Bearcats failed to score a touchdown the following week in a loss at Rutgers and the dream was dead, yet late-season victories over Syracuse and UConn were enough for a share of the Big East title. Collaros’ return for December 31st’s Liberty Bowl was near-miraculous, and the Bearcats won 31-24 for a 10-3 season.
The first crack in the Big East’s foundation began to show that September. Syracuse and Pittsburgh announced departures for the Atlantic Coast Conference. TCU, which had been invited to the Big East in 2010, responded to the changing tides by backing out of their impending move, instead accepting a bid to the Big 12. In October, West Virginia decided to join them. Everyone would abandon ship following the 2012 football season.
The Big East quickly tried to plug holes, signing Boise State, San Diego State, and Navy to football-only agreements and UCF, SMU, Houston, Memphis, and Temple in all sports. When Rutgers announced a departure to the Big Ten in 2012, the Big East backfilled with Tulane and East Carolina. Louisville left for the ACC the following day and the Big East was all but toast. The conference’s seven non-football schools––dubbed the Catholic 7 by the media–-split off, buying the conference’s name and Madison Square Garden contract while the football faction of the Big East renamed itself the American Athletic Conference, effective for the 2013 season.
Boise State and San Diego State ultimately decided to stay put in the Mountain West. Cincinnati and the Big East would get a victory lap in 2012, but everything was changing.
2012: Titles and Turnover
A year after being chosen sixth in the preseason poll only to win the conference’s co-championship, the Bearcats were still undervalued in the 2012 preseason media poll, picked fourth behind Louisville, South Florida, and Rutgers. Cincinnati thumped Pittsburgh to open the season, kicking off a five-game win streak that stretched into mid-October.
The dream of one last undefeated regular season in the Big East was dashed with road losses to Toledo and Louisville in one-score games, but Cincinnati righted the ship, winning four of the last five to lock up another slice of the conference’s championship. A few weeks later, aided by a late touchdown by Travis Kelce, they won the Belk Bowl over Duke.
UC had finally secured its football footing, only to find itself champions four times in five tries in a conference that no longer existed.
Perhaps sensing the uncertain trajectory, and riding the tailwind of two-straight conference titles, Jones ran for the exits. Reports surfaced immediately after the regular season that he’d accepted a job at Colorado, which he denied. Then rumors swirled linking him to openings at Tennessee and Wisconsin.
Less than one week after the conclusion of the 2012 season, Jones was a Volunteer.
Less than one day after that, Tommy Tuberville was a Bearcat.
Swinging for the Fences
The Big East was quickly losing and adding schools, so why couldn’t UC do the same with a coaching search? The Bearcats beat UConn on December 1 and athletic director Whit Babcock held an introductory pep rally for Tuberville only a week later.
Tuberville came to Cincinnati following a three-year stint at Texas Tech that yielded a 20-17 record, but before that, he enjoyed a decorated ten-year run at Auburn, including a 13-0 season in 2004. The coaching carousel had been whirring up a storm at Cincinnati since Rick Minter’s firing, but maybe an established coach could bring the kind of stability the football program desperately needed.
Cincinnati had missed the boat on the largest round of realignment college athletics had ever seen, and decided to swing big––first by hiring a sitting power-conference head coach and next by overhauling Nippert for the first time in nearly a quarter century. Just two weeks after introducing a new head coach, Babcock began to sell a new-look stadium. The project was estimated to carry an $86 million price tag and deliver a towering glass structure stretching down the stadium’s west side. The new pavilion would add up to 30 private suites and more than 1,000 premium seats with a private club lounge, along with an improved press area and overhauled concourses.
Original plans were to handle the renovation in stages to avoid impacting football season, though UC administrators quickly realized a temporary move to Paul Brown Stadium in 2014 would be necessary.
The overhaul would increase capacity and serve as a revenue engine, bolstering the university’s resume the next time conference expansion came calling.
2013-15: The Tommy Tuberville Era
Success started with a bang next fall for the ‘Cats in the new-look AAC with a 42-7 thumping of Purdue in front of a stadium-record crowd of better than 36,000. Starting quarterback Legaux went down with a season-ending knee injury in a loss at Illinois the following week, but the team navigated a coaching change and devastating injury luck to win eight of its next nine games.
With a wrecking ball waiting to topple the press box built two decades earlier, the Bearcats welcomed Louisville under the lights of Nippert Stadium on December 5th for perhaps the final time, given the Cardinals’ departure for the ACC.
Louisville jumped out to a 10-point lead. Cincinnati answered with 14 straight. Cardinal touchdown. Bearcat touchdown. Cardinal touchdown. Bearcat field goal. The game went to overtime but Cincinnati was unable to respond to a touchdown in the first period and the preseason favorites delivered heartbreak to end a surprising 9-3 year in Cincinnati.
In 2014, the Bearcats––who had been as dominant in league play as any team dating back to 2008––finally got the respect they’d earned, clocking in atop the preseason media poll. With the 2014 season shifting downtown, and with Notre Dame transfer Gunner Kiel in tow, expectations were high.
Much like 2013, things started with a bang. After a pair of bye weeks opened the season, Cincinnati boat raced Toledo in a 58-34 final behind a record-tying six touchdown passes from Kiel. A week later they got by Miami in front of nearly 42,000 at PBS––a Victory Bell record crowd.
And, much like 2013, the stumbles came early. UC made it a shootout at Ohio State before the Buckeyes pulled away. They returned home the following week to open AAC play and got blown out by Memphis before a trip to Miami to face the Hurricanes ended with a lopsided 55-34 defeat. The Bearcats needed to start stacking wins and that’s exactly what they did––a benefit of the softer AAC competition. A blowout win at SMU. A 17-point win vs. South Florida. A 24-point victory at Tulane. A 54-46 thriller over East Carolina. A shutout at UConn. A rock fight victory at Temple after Thanksgiving. The 2-3 Bearcats were now the 8-3 Bearcats, a December 6 home tilt against Houston looming.
That’s where the comparisons to 2013 ended because the Bearcats didn’t miss their final shot this time. They ran up a 35-17 lead on the Cougars and held on for a share of the AAC title belt. A once hapless, inconsistent football program had won five conference championships in seven years.
Just as the wheels of conference realignment began to show signs of movement, Cincinnati’s wheels began to shake loose.
The team returned to the newly renovated Nippert in 2015 and hosted a series of large crowds thanks to the increased capacity. But the product on the field began to trend in the wrong direction. After a storm-delayed win over Alabama A&M to re-open the venue, the Bearcats dropped a disappointing game to Temple and the roller coaster was off. They beat Miami in Oxford before losing a second heartbreaker in Memphis. They returned home to upset the Hurricanes in front of more than 40,000 at Nippert, but went on the road to BYU and coughed one up. Back at Nippert, they handled conference bottom-feeders UConn and UCF but then traveled to 25th-ranked Houston and came up a TD short. They beat Tulsa before getting rocked by South Florida. A game-winning field goal got them by ECU, but the Hawaii Bowl was a 42-7 collapse. Despite avoiding consecutive losses, the Bearcats fell six times for a 7-6 record.
FC Cincinnati
For the first time since 1968, the Bearcats got a roommate in 2015 when USL upstart FC Cincinnati joined the soccer world and began playing its home games at Nippert in its inaugural 2016 season.
Nippert’s historic confines provided a boost, as the team set a series of attendance records. An April match against Louisville City FC drew 20,497––a USL record they broke again less than a month later when 23,375 showed up to see the team face Pittsburgh. The league record toppled several times over the next few years, yet the high water mark of the team’s fan support in Clifton came in July 2016 when more than 35,000 fans turned out for an exhibition against Crystal Palace, the most to ever attend a soccer match in the state of Ohio.
FCC made its impact on the stadium itself, first in 2016 with new turf (an upgrade from what had been installed in 2013) and a renovation of the visitor’s locker room before a more substantial alteration: A removal of roughly 2,000 seats in the south end of the bowl to accommodate a larger field for player safety, followed the next year.
UC also christened a new video board in 2017.
2016: A Dead End
2017-19: The Road Back
Director of Athletics Mike Bohn got to work. Given the sinking win-loss record, and the recently evaporated conference realignment hopes, the pressure was at its highest while the job’s attractiveness was arguably at its worst in 15 years.
The Enquirer reported the initial targets were Jeff Brohm (who ended up at Purdue) and P.J. Fleck (who ended up at Minnesota). But according to the Columbus Dispatch, a handful of Ohio State assistants were after the gig. One of them got it.
On December 10, Luke Fickell was announced as the next head coach of the Bearcats. Cincinnati football needed to get back to basics: Disciplined football and aggressive recruiting. The last coach to bring that jolt to Clifton was Ohio State defensive coordinator Mark Dantonio. Maybe Ohio State defensive coordinator Fickell could do the same.
The results didn’t come quickly. Fickell won his first game over Austin Peay and after a loss at top-10 Michigan, he escaped Oxford with a miraculous win over Miami in the Battle for the Victory Bell. But it was clear UC had a lot of work to do. The team lost five straight games, including blowouts at the hands of top-25 UCF and South Florida. Narrow one-point wins against Tulane and UConn bookended two more losses and the Bearcats had a second-straight 4-8 record. Just 23,000 fans turned out to Nippert in each of the final two home games that year.
The 2018 season brought more expectations and more urgency, and it started with a Rose Bowl date with UCLA and new head coach Chip Kelly. The Bearcats, who were two-touchdown underdogs, opened with 2017 starter Hayden Moore before giving the ball to redshirt freshman Desmond Ridder, a Tuberville recruit from Louisville. The Bruins jumped out to a 10-0 lead after the first quarter but the tides turned quickly on a pair of Mike Warren II touchdown runs and a Cole Smith field goal. UCLA tied it with a 74-yard TD run in the third, setting the stage for a monumentally important fourth quarter.
After turning away the Bruins on a fourth-down attempt, the Bearcats took over at the UCLA 36, clinging to a two-point lead thanks to a safety. On 4th and 2 at the 12, Fickell went for the jugular, turning down a short field goal attempt that would’ve made it a two-score game. Warren came through again, carrying it for three yards and a first down. Five plays later, he was falling into the end zone. The Bearcats were flying home with a 26-17 victory and a new day had dawned.
Ridder took over from there, winning his first five games as the starter, including a rainy shutout over Miami at Paul Brown and a heart-stopper against Ohio at Nippert. After an overtime defeat at Temple, the wins kept coming. UC won four of its last five to put the finishing touches on a 10-2 regular season. A wild and rainy Military Bowl victory was the cherry on top and the Bearcats were winners of 11 games––most since 2009––on the heels of an 8-16 stretch.
The early and unexpected breakthrough had raised the bar and topping it in 2019 would be the new challenge. Another season-opening victory over UCLA, this time at Nippert, got things started on the right foot. Following a loss to 5th-ranked Ohio State in Columbus, the Bearcats took off. The team didn’t lose again for nearly three months––a nine-game win streak featuring a tasteful mix of blowouts (Miami, Marshall, UConn) and dog fights (East Carolina, South Florida, Temple).
An October 4th classic against top-20 UCF was the latest tentpole victory, a sold-out Nippert at Night thriller that brought to a halt the Knights’ streak of 19-straight conference wins and passed the crown to the Bearcats as the conference’s new flag bearer.
The Bearcats lost the AAC title game to the Tigers in Memphis, but the tides had turned back in UC’s favor and, though they were still desperately in need of steadier conference footing, they were closing the decade on a rocket ship of momentum.
