Cincinnati Football: Let’s Talk The Bearcats’ Bowl Game Scenarios

So, not a whole lot to look forward to as far as Cincinnati’s postseason’s hopes are concerned.

UC waved bye bye to the Access Bowl pretty much when they decided to fumble and bumble their games to Temple and Memphis away. Plus their AAC Championship hopes against Navy or Houston, and even their AAC East Division title hopes, went up in smoke like so much of UC’s defense in their 65-27 loss to South Florida on Friday night.

At this point, with Cincinnati sitting at 6-5, a mid-range bowl is in the Bearcats’ potential future. The qualifier there is “potential” because while they’re bowl eligible with six wins, UC’s isn’t necessarily an automatic participant in a postseason game. With 40 bowls this year attempting to fill 80 spots, there are several programs on track for a 5-7 record with only 71 bowl eligible. As a result, bowl committees can make exceptions for these programs to pull them into bowls even with a sub-.500 record and there is a sliver of a possibility Cincinnati could get bumped like 6-6 UAB last season.

Now, UC probably won’t be in that position should they lose to East Carolina this Saturday. The manner in which Bearcats fans tend to travel to and pack in neutral site stadiums has proven to bowl committees that if they want to sell tickets and merchandise, Cincinnati’s the team to target. High fives, everybody!

So let’s take a look at the Bearcats potential postseason destinations this season and just where several folks are predicting them to go. Keep in mind, these are only the tie-ins for the AAC and Cincinnati could find themselves in a random bowl because those Power Five conference have so few bowl eligible teams.

• Access Bowl (nope)
• Birmingham Bowl
• St. Petersburg Bowl
• Miami Beach Bowl
• Military Bowl
• Sheraton Hawaii Bowl (please god, nope)
• Boca Raton Bowl
• AutoNation Cure Bowl

Not even a meteor shower simultaneously striking all two dozen programs ahead of UC in the College Football Playoff rankings could jolt the Bearcats into that Access Bowl slot on New Years Day. But here are a few possibilities:

• Campus Insiders: Hawaii Bowl v. BYU
• SB Nation: Independence Bowl v. Utah State, filling in for ACC/SEC teams
• ESPN (McMurphy): Boca Raton Bowl v. Toledo
• ESPN (Schlabach): Birmingham Bowl v. Auburn
• CBS Sports: Pinstripe Bowl v. NC State, filling in for Big Ten team
• Fox Sports: Birmingham Bowl v. Auburn
• USA Today: St. Petersburg Bowl v. Louisiana Tech
• Phil Steele: Miami Beach Bowl v. Louisiana Tech
• Bleacher Report: St. Petersburg Bowl v. Southern Miss
• College Sports Madness: Boca Raton Bowl v. Northern Illinois
• Sporting News: St. Petersburg Bowl v. Marshall
• Orlando Sentinel: Military Bowl v. Duke (OMG NOPE, NEVER AGAIN NOPE)
• Sports Illustrated: Miami Beach Bowl v. Southern Miss

So, not liking the Military Bowl prediction because last year was a disaster and because I don’t want UC to play Duke again nor the Hawaii Bowl because it’s in another part of the world and I don’t want to play BYU until next season. And those games against Southern Miss, Louisiana Tech, Northern Illinois, or Toledo don’t exactly tickle my fancy, although any opportunity to make Skip Holtz cry I want to jump all over. So the Bulldogs in Miami or Tampa could be intriguing.

The “headliners” in my eyes are Utah State, NC State, Marshall, and Auburn with the Tigers at the tippy top for obvious reasons. Auburn fans would have overwhelming fan support in Birmingham, like the Military Bowl and Virginia Tech last year, because they could walk there faster than UC fans could fly in. However, any opportunity to take down a recent national champion, albeit in a down year, should be met with excitement. Plus the stories around Tommy Tuberville facing the program that made his career pretty much write themselves.