The 2020s
Making History
2020 - Present
2020: Unprecedented Times
With minimal attrition (the 2020 NFL Draft featured just one Bearcat selected) and a key transfer or two, the 2020 season brought with it a host of expectations the program hadn’t seen since the days of Brian Kelly. This was a team with undefeated potential.
Yet before spring practice, with the hype train still at the station, everything shut down. The first global pandemic in a century canceled the spring game and cast the entire season into doubt.
After months of uncertainty, and several conferences announcing significant cancelations and delays to fall sports, the American Athletic Conference announced on August 5th a plan to begin football competition on September 19th, with each school playing its eight conference games on their originally scheduled dates. The conference title game would be played on December 5th, 12th, or 19th at the site of the regular season champion, providing extra wiggle room for delays for virus outbreaks.
Cincinnati’s season opener against Austin Peay—originally scheduled for Thursday, September 3rd—was moved to September 19th following the Mid-American Conference’s decision to move its season to the spring (the conference later decided to play a league-only schedule) and the Big Ten’s decision to indefinitely postpone athletics (they later resumed in a shortened season) signaling the cancelation of UC’s games against Western Michigan, Nebraska, and Miami. The Bearcats and RedHawks would not be playing the Battle for the Victory Bell for the first time since World War II.
On August 24th the Bearcats were ranked #20 in the AP Preseason poll. Two days later, UC added a non-conference game against Army for September 26th just one month later. The next day, the East Carolina game, originally slated for November 12th, was moved to November 14th. Cincinnati had its best preseason ranking in program history and was building a schedule on the fly.
By the time college football arrived in Cincinnati that fall, the Bearcats had already improved to #13 in the AP Poll. They quickly dispatched Austin Peay in a 55-20 romp in front of the lowest announced attendance in program history: Zero. Only essential staff and the immediate family members of players and coaches were permitted to attend.
When the Bearcats hosted Army the following week, the Black Knights were ranked 22nd in the AP Poll, marking the first ranked matchup played in Nippert since 2008. A pair of Desmond Ridder scores through the air and a rushing TD from Alabama transfer Jerome Ford got UC past West Point in a 24-10 final. The team opened conference play the following week against South Florida—a 28-7 victory.
Cincinnati was back in the AP top ten for the first time since 2009, bracing for its first road test at Tulsa. But an outbreak of positive cases at UC postponed the game and shifted attention to the biggest matchup of the season the following week: A road trip to face 16th-ranked SMU. Playing in front of a limited-capacity crowd of fewer than 8,000 fans in Dallas, the Bearcats and Mustangs kept it close in the first half, going into the break with a 14-10 UC lead. In the second half, Ridder dazzled. The Bearcats outscored SMU 28-3 the rest of the way, punctuated by a 91-yard Ridder touchdown scramble, the longest by a quarterback in program history.
The Bearcats advanced to #7 in the AP Poll. They didn’t let up from there, hammering the next three visitors to Nippert Stadium—Memphis, Houston, and East Carolina—by a combined score of 142-37, stretching the conference win streak to 13 games and the home win streak to 19, the best in program history, topping Sid Gillman’s Bearcats 66 years earlier. The most dominant run in decades set the stage for the conference’s biggest matchup of the year, a trip to Orlando to face preseason-favorite UCF.
After following into an early 14-3 hole, the Bearcats battled back to carry a 19-17 edge into halftime. UCF regained the lead heading into the fourth quarter before a costly interception set up the Bearcats deep in Knights territory, where they took a lead they wouldn’t surrender. The 36-33 victory made Cincinnati 8-0 for the first time since 2009.
The ensuing road trip to Temple was canceled because of outbreaks within both locker rooms and the regular season finale at Tulsa was axed because of Cincinnati cases. A game originally scheduled for October 17th, then December 5th, then December 12th, would finally come to fruition on December 19th as the conference championship game—played in Cincinnati by virtue of the conference’s tiebreaker: CFP ranking. The 8th-ranked Bearcats would welcome the 23rd-ranked Golden Hurricane, and they’d do so in front of their first home crowd of the season: 5,381 shivering fans.
Cincinnati surged to a 10-0 start before Tulsa equalized and the game became a back-and-forth bout. The Bearcats took the lead three times, only for the Golden Hurricane to answer. With fewer than four minutes remaining, Fickell played keep-away. The 12-play, 51-yard drive drained the remainder of the game clock, setting up a 34-yard Cole Smith field goal to give Cincinnati its first title game win in the conference, sending the team back to a major bowl game for the first time in 11 years.
In the limited-attendance Peach Bowl, the Bearcats rolled to a 21-10 lead over Georgia after three quarters but were held scoreless in the fourth, falling to the 11th-ranked Bulldogs on a 53-yard field goal in the final seconds. UGA used their momentum to win the next two national titles, but the Bearcats––who would soon
2021: History
Cincinnati finished the 2020 campaign ranked 8th in the final AP Poll—a remarkable achievement but not one without precedent. The Bearcats also finished #8 in 2009. Being ranked highly in the following preseason poll broke new ground. On August 16, when UC opened at #8 in the first rankings of 2021, it became clear that the program was positioned for a historic season—even better than previous high water marks like 1954, 2009, or 2020.
The potential was there to take success to the next level, and that only meant one thing: A berth in the College Football Playoff. Cincinnati’s previous postseason appearances were a result of a simple qualification process. The Bearcats made BCS bowl trips in 2008 and 2009 by winning the Big East—a league with an automatic bid. They’d made the Peach Bowl in 2020 by earning the New Year’s Six bowl bid reserved for the country’s top-ranked Group of Five team. But to crack the four-team playoff would be a much dicier proposition, one that would need to be done without the help of the system. Instead, they’d need to break the system, beating their opponents, beating perception, and getting some lucky breaks along the way. But it seemed possible.
The Bearcats welcomed Miami to open the season, a renewal of the Battle for the Victory Bell series that had sat unexpectedly dormant in 2020. The season started fast. Just 45 seconds into the year, a Ridder pass was spiraling high above Carson Field, landing 53 yards later in the outstretched arms of a sprinting Tyler Scott, who took it the rest of the way for an 81-yard score. By the fourth quarter, the Bearcats were leading 42-0 and Ridder had tossed another three touchdowns while adding another on the ground. One down.
But before the Bearcats could play another game, they finally won an even bigger battle.
On September 10th, the Big 12 Conference announced it was adding Cincinnati. And so 3,646 days—nearly a decade on the dot—after Syracuse and Pitt announced their departure and the Big East began to crumble, Cincinnati had scratched and clawed its way back to solid ground.
When UC joined the league in 2023, it would bring to an end a decade-long AAC era that featured a lot of success but also a lot of uncertainty, not just financially but perceptually. In the short term, the latter was much more pressing to Fickell and the Bearcats as they continued to navigate the choppy waters stretched out between them and their ambitious goals.
The Bearcats hosted Murray State at Nippert the following day, but the gathering was a celebration of all the hard work, and the gambles won, to get the university back to where it deserved. The 42-7 victory over the Racers was just icing on the cake.
The real season started on September 18th as the Bearcats and thousands of fans drove deep into Indiana to take on a resurgent, 17th-ranked Hoosiers team inside Memorial Stadium—a kiln in the late-summer heat—packed with nearly 53,000 fans. It was the largest non-conference crowd in Bloomington since 1987. UC opened listlessly, allowing Indiana to take a 14-0 lead while struggling on offense to convert a first down, flailing behind a pair of early Ridder turnovers. But a late Ford touchdown run and a field goal at the first-half horn kept the Bearcats in the hunt with a 14-10 halftime deficit. The Bearcats earned their first lead of the afternoon late in the third on a second Ford score to cap a 17-0 run, but Indiana answered right back. Before the Hoosiers could capitalize on the building momentum, Tre Tucker came to the rescue, taking the ensuing kickoff 99 yards to the house. Indiana regained the lead but Pierce, and then Ridder, iced it with the help of a timely interception. UC had passed its first test to move to 3-0.
Two weeks later the Bearcats traveled to South Bend for arguably the biggest game in program history: Fickell and the 7th-ranked Bearcats against former UC head coach Kelly and the 9th-ranked Fighting Irish. It was a meeting announced in April 2019. Two and a half years later, the Bearcats entered as the favorite. With an uncertain strength of schedule in conference play, Cincinnati needed to make a statement in the first top-10 regular season matchup in program history.
The Bearcats came out punching. On the Irish’s first possession, Sauce Gardner came down with a bad Notre Dame pass to halt what was shaping up to be a scoring drive. A second interception put UC in great field position, and Ridder capitalized to make it 7-0 early in the second quarter. The Irish booted the ensuing kickoff and the Bearcats could only turn it into three points, but UC’s final drive of the half was an 80-yard beauty, culminating in a 27-yard Tucker touchdown catch. Cincinnati had swarmed South Bend and now tens of thousands of fans clad in red were making their presence felt in the glow of a 17-0 lead.
The Irish got up off the mat in the second half, scoring the third quarter’s only points on a touchdown run with 1:19 left and adding to it with a 32-yard pass midway through the fourth period. With eight minutes remaining, Fickell and the Bearcats needed to land the knockout blow. Ridder delivered. Following a 36-yard strike down the middle to Leonard Taylor, Ridder got around the left edge and trotted into the end zone before beckoning for the Cincinnati fans to make some noise. It was a two-possession game and the defense took over from there.
The titanic victory marked the end of Notre Dame’s 26-game home winning streak and the highest-ranked win for the Bearcats since the trajectory-altering night against Rutgers in 2006. Cincinnati still had plenty of work to do, but it had just completed the centerpiece of its playoff resume. The rest came down to simply stacking wins and praying for some key losses elsewhere around the country.
The team got to work six nights later, demolishing Temple in a 52-3 Nippert at Night win before following it up the next week with a 56-21 dismantling of UCF that saw Ford rush for four touchdowns in the first half to build a 35-0 lead.
Understandably, the weight of perfection began to creep up on the Bearcats. In Annapolis, UC mounted a 27-10 lead on Navy before a fourth-quarter drought made it a one-possession game in the final minute. In New Orleans, the Bearcats led Tulane by just two points late in the third quarter before trudging to a 31-12 win.
Even against Tulsa—a 2020 title game rematch—played on Homecoming and the heels of the program’s first College GameDay appearance, Cincinnati withstood a scoreless fourth quarter and needed a goal-line turnover to escape.
A Friday night date in Tampa offered a chance for the 2nd-ranked Bearcats to get right. The Bulls struck first, taking a 7-0 lead midway through the first, but Cincinnati was quick to respond, reeling off 31 unanswered points to put the game out of reach. The touchdown to end the run, a third-quarter strike to Josh Whyle, was the 79th of Ridder’s career, pushing the once-unheralded recruit to the top of the UC record books, past his quarterbacks coach Gino Guidlugli.
When the Bearcats returned home for a Senior Day matchup with SMU, they left no doubt. Ridder, Scott, Ford, and Alec Pierce built a 48-0 lead to bury the Mustangs much like they had a year earlier, and a similar 21-0, second-quarter run a week later sank the Pirates in Greenville. Cincinnati was undefeated again.
Cincinnati entered Championship Saturday—on the eve of the College Football Playoff selection show—on the outside looking in. Though they were ranked 4th in the CFP rankings, many believed an Oklahoma State victory over Baylor in the Big 12 championship game would be enough to springboard the 5th-ranked Cowboys past the Bearcats and into the four-team field.
Just before kickoff at Nippert, the Bears delivered the Bearcats a Big 12 housewarming gift, stuffing Oklahoma State on the game’s deciding 4th-down try. A Cincinnati win would all but clinch history.
Houston was first on the board with a field goal, but the lead changed hands multiple times in the first half and the teams entered the break with UC clinging to a 14-13 advantage.
Ridder found Taylor early in the third quarter to stretch the Cincinnati lead to 21-13, but the entire game turned on the first play of Houston’s following drive. Linebacker Joel Dublanko jumped in front of a Cougar pass, giving Cincinnati the ball deep in Houston territory and setting up a 21-yard Ridder to Pierce strike. It was 28-13 with momentum snowballing in Cincinnati’s favor. When Ford cashed one from 42 yards out, the Bearcats had blown it open with a 21-point flurry in eight minutes.
As the final whistle sounded, the sellout crowd flooded over the stadium walls. Ridder, a four-year starter, finished his career unbeaten at Nippert, and his Bearcats had made an undeniable playoff case.
The Bearcats were announced as the four-seed the next day, the first Group of Five program to make the field. They lost to top-ranked Alabama in the Cotton Bowl but made history in the process. A later expansion of the field would cement Cincinnati as the only school to ever achieve the impossible in the four-team era.
Cincinnati finished the 2020 campaign ranked 8th in the final AP Poll—a remarkable achievement but not one without precedent. The Bearcats also finished #8 in 2009. Being ranked highly in the following preseason poll broke new ground. On August 16, when UC opened at #8 in the first rankings of 2021, it became clear that the program was positioned for a historic season—even better than previous high water marks like 1954, 2009, or 2020.
The potential was there to take success to the next level, and that only meant one thing: A berth in the College Football Playoff. Cincinnati’s previous postseason appearances were a result of a simple qualification process. The Bearcats made BCS bowl trips in 2008 and 2009 by winning the Big East—a league with an automatic bid. They’d made the Peach Bowl in 2020 by earning the New Year’s Six bowl bid reserved for the country’s top-ranked Group of Five team. But to crack the four-team playoff would be a much dicier proposition, one that would need to be done without the help of the system. Instead, they’d need to break the system, beating their opponents, beating perception, and getting some lucky breaks along the way. But it seemed possible.
The Bearcats welcomed Miami to open the season, a renewal of the Battle for the Victory Bell series that had sat unexpectedly dormant in 2020. The season started fast. Just 45 seconds into the year, a Ridder pass was spiraling high above Carson Field, landing 53 yards later in the outstretched arms of a sprinting Tyler Scott, who took it the rest of the way for an 81-yard score. By the fourth quarter, the Bearcats were leading 42-0 and Ridder had tossed another three touchdowns while adding another on the ground. One down.
But before the Bearcats could play another game, they finally won an even bigger battle.
On September 10th, the Big 12 Conference announced it was adding Cincinnati. And so 3,646 days—nearly a decade on the dot—after Syracuse and Pitt announced their departure and the Big East began to crumble, Cincinnati had scratched and clawed its way back to solid ground.
When UC joined the league in 2023, it would bring to an end a decade-long AAC era that featured a lot of success but also a lot of uncertainty, not just financially but perceptually. In the short term, the latter was much more pressing to Fickell and the Bearcats as they continued to navigate the choppy waters stretched out between them and their ambitious goals.
The Bearcats hosted Murray State at Nippert the following day, but the gathering was a celebration of all the hard work, and the gambles won, to get the university back to where it deserved. The 42-7 victory over the Racers was just icing on the cake.
The real season started on September 18th as the Bearcats and thousands of fans drove deep into Indiana to take on a resurgent, 17th-ranked Hoosiers team inside Memorial Stadium—a kiln in the late-summer heat—packed with nearly 53,000 fans. It was the largest non-conference crowd in Bloomington since 1987. UC opened listlessly, allowing Indiana to take a 14-0 lead while struggling on offense to convert a first down, flailing behind a pair of early Ridder turnovers. But a late Ford touchdown run and a field goal at the first-half horn kept the Bearcats in the hunt with a 14-10 halftime deficit. The Bearcats earned their first lead of the afternoon late in the third on a second Ford score to cap a 17-0 run, but Indiana answered right back. Before the Hoosiers could capitalize on the building momentum, Tre Tucker came to the rescue, taking the ensuing kickoff 99 yards to the house. Indiana regained the lead but Pierce, and then Ridder, iced it with the help of a timely interception. UC had passed its first test to move to 3-0.
Two weeks later the Bearcats traveled to South Bend for arguably the biggest game in program history: Fickell and the 7th-ranked Bearcats against former UC head coach Kelly and the 9th-ranked Fighting Irish. It was a meeting announced in April 2019. Two and a half years later, the Bearcats entered as the favorite. With an uncertain strength of schedule in conference play, Cincinnati needed to make a statement in the first top-10 regular season matchup in program history.
The Bearcats came out punching. On the Irish’s first possession, Sauce Gardner came down with a bad Notre Dame pass to halt what was shaping up to be a scoring drive. A second interception put UC in great field position, and Ridder capitalized to make it 7-0 early in the second quarter. The Irish booted the ensuing kickoff and the Bearcats could only turn it into three points, but UC’s final drive of the half was an 80-yard beauty, culminating in a 27-yard Tucker touchdown catch. Cincinnati had swarmed South Bend and now tens of thousands of fans clad in red were making their presence felt in the glow of a 17-0 lead.
The Irish got up off the mat in the second half, scoring the third quarter’s only points on a touchdown run with 1:19 left and adding to it with a 32-yard pass midway through the fourth period. With eight minutes remaining, Fickell and the Bearcats needed to land the knockout blow. Ridder delivered. Following a 36-yard strike down the middle to Leonard Taylor, Ridder got around the left edge and trotted into the end zone before beckoning for the Cincinnati fans to make some noise. It was a two-possession game and the defense took over from there.
The titanic victory marked the end of Notre Dame’s 26-game home winning streak and the highest-ranked win for the Bearcats since the trajectory-altering night against Rutgers in 2006. Cincinnati still had plenty of work to do, but it had just completed the centerpiece of its playoff resume. The rest came down to simply stacking wins and praying for some key losses elsewhere around the country.
The team got to work six nights later, demolishing Temple in a 52-3 Nippert at Night win before following it up the next week with a 56-21 dismantling of UCF that saw Ford rush for four touchdowns in the first half to build a 35-0 lead.
Understandably, the weight of perfection began to creep up on the Bearcats. In Annapolis, UC mounted a 27-10 lead on Navy before a fourth-quarter drought made it a one-possession game in the final minute. In New Orleans, the Bearcats led Tulane by just two points late in the third quarter before trudging to a 31-12 win.
Even against Tulsa—a 2020 title game rematch—played on Homecoming and the heels of the program’s first College GameDay appearance, Cincinnati withstood a scoreless fourth quarter and needed a goal-line turnover to escape.
A Friday night date in Tampa offered a chance for the 2nd-ranked Bearcats to get right. The Bulls struck first, taking a 7-0 lead midway through the first, but Cincinnati was quick to respond, reeling off 31 unanswered points to put the game out of reach. The touchdown to end the run, a third-quarter strike to Josh Whyle, was the 79th of Ridder’s career, pushing the once-unheralded recruit to the top of the UC record books, past his quarterbacks coach Gino Guidlugli.
When the Bearcats returned home for a Senior Day matchup with SMU, they left no doubt. Ridder, Scott, Ford, and Alec Pierce built a 48-0 lead to bury the Mustangs much like they had a year earlier, and a similar 21-0, second-quarter run a week later sank the Pirates in Greenville. Cincinnati was undefeated again.
Cincinnati entered Championship Saturday—on the eve of the College Football Playoff selection show—on the outside looking in. Though they were ranked 4th in the CFP rankings, many believed an Oklahoma State victory over Baylor in the Big 12 championship game would be enough to springboard the 5th-ranked Cowboys past the Bearcats and into the four-team field.
Just before kickoff at Nippert, the Bears delivered the Bearcats a Big 12 housewarming gift, stuffing Oklahoma State on the game’s deciding 4th-down try. A Cincinnati win would all but clinch history.
Houston was first on the board with a field goal, but the lead changed hands multiple times in the first half and the teams entered the break with UC clinging to a 14-13 advantage.
Ridder found Taylor early in the third quarter to stretch the Cincinnati lead to 21-13, but the entire game turned on the first play of Houston’s following drive. Linebacker Joel Dublanko jumped in front of a Cougar pass, giving Cincinnati the ball deep in Houston territory and setting up a 21-yard Ridder to Pierce strike. It was 28-13 with momentum snowballing in Cincinnati’s favor. When Ford cashed one from 42 yards out, the Bearcats had blown it open with a 21-point flurry in eight minutes.
As the final whistle sounded, the sellout crowd flooded over the stadium walls. Ridder, a four-year starter, finished his career unbeaten at Nippert, and his Bearcats had made an undeniable playoff case.
The Bearcats were announced as the four-seed the next day, the first Group of Five program to make the field. They lost to top-ranked Alabama in the Cotton Bowl but made history in the process. A later expansion of the field would cement Cincinnati as the only school to ever achieve the impossible in the four-team era.
A Legacy
Nippert is a stadium whose story mirrors its football team. It was born a long, long time ago out of mere circumstance and then paid for and defended with blood, sweat, and tears across the next century. Look back on the history of Nippert and the Bearcats and you won’t find good fortune or great means. Instead, you’ll find hard work, sacrifice, ingenuity, and undeniable resilience.
Before Nippert Stadium was one of the best venues in the sport, it was a muddy hollow, a humble field, and a condemned eyesore. But it always managed to skirt extinction, demand respect, beat a death sentence, and continue to survive. And the Bearcats always have, too.
