Youth Movement Strong at Cincinnati
By Chris Bains
It’s been well documented this Summer about the hoards of young players filling the ranks of UC’s football team. Something like 65 players are underclassmen on the Bearcats’ roster. This can be attributed to Butch Jones loading his team with players he directly targets and partially as a result of the Bearcats’ roster being decimated by attrition in the 2009 recruiting class. Clearly the talent is there but the team top-to-bottom is extremely green.
But I’m not going into that, not in this piece anyways. The youth movement I speak of isn’t on the field but instead in the stands. The UC students have again sold out their portion of the season tickets for the 2012 football season. They did it last year and again have stepped up this year, making it four seasons in a row that the student section of Nippert Stadium will be 100% full.
Their contribution to the in-game experience every Bearcat home game is invaluable. In the past three seasons in which UC’s student section at Nippert was sold out the Bearcats are 13 – 3. Counting the two wins this season and that record balloons to 15 – 3. That correlation is no coincidence. This is easily one of the most raucous, loud, and engaged group of fans in all of college football. They are young, they are passionate, and they love UC football. Just how much did they get in the heads of the Pitt Panthers two Thursdays ago? Half of their eight penalties were of the false start or delay of game variety. You can chalk those up to the noise bellowed from the stands by Cincinnati’s student section.
This youth movement isn’t just beneficial to the team on the field, however. It is instrumental in growing the program in the decades to come. As these fans graduate and begin their lives outside of UC, there will always remain the nostalgia for Bearcat football and experiencing the bright lights of Nippert in front of their own eyes. There’s something special about a football game at Nippert Stadium; the band racing down the steps onto the field, the pyrotechnics as the team runs out of the ‘cave’ to meet the student section, and the Halloween music on third down. It’s everything that makes Cincinnati Bearcat football unique and something UC students can take into adulthood.
But why will we start to see this now? Why hasn’t the occurred at such a rapid pace over the last 30 or 40 or 50 years? The answer is simple but I’ll go the long-way around in getting to that because I’m nothing if not long-winded. The primary stat that has been echoed over and over again are the almost 240,000 alumni living in the United States. That’s a huge number but only a small percentage of those alumni actually attended the university during the renaissance of the football program under Mark Dantonio, Brian Kelly, and now Butch Jones. It was just the past 5 or 6 graduating classes that have really experienced exciting, winning, and sometimes dominating Bearcat football. The previous 20-or-so graduating classes witnessed football teams that rarely sniffed bowl games let alone conference championships. They never had a connection between their time on-campus and a football program basking in the national spotlight.
Most people wonder why Cincinnati struggles to sell out Nippert for non-marquee games or sell out non-student season tickets and the answer is right there. Graduates 20 or 30 years ago may have enjoyed their experience at UC but they certainly never associated it with the Bearcats hoisting a BCS Conference trophy over their heads or traveling to Miami and New Orleans to play in a BCS bowl game against the country’s best. There were the occasional upsets but never the incredible wins in front of national audiences or the dominating season like in 2009. The most recent graduating classes at UC have experienced that kind of success, however, and will take these memories with them well into adulthood.
That is why this youth movement is so important to UC athletics. Students love Bearcat football. That’s evident in these season tickets being sold out for the fourth straight year and the South endzone being jam-packed for the two home games this year. Nostalgia for the red and black will translate into more regular tickets sold on a per-game basis and of the season-ticket variety, increasing UCats and 1200 Club membership, as well as more donations in general when they graduate. Over the course of years Nippert Stadium will be easier to fill up and athletics in general will have more money to work with.
The growth of this fanbase has to be thought of in the long-term. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither does the collective mindset of tens-of-thousands of people. I don’t expect students one or even five years removed from college to make a big splash in support of UC athletics and the football program. I mean I’ve been out of college for two years and most of my paycheck goes toward rent, bills, and getting to work. Life’s fun that way.
But as students who witnessed the 2008 Orange Bowl campaign, for example, see their salaries increase upon promotion they are more inclined to join UCats or the 1200 Club so they can be apart of the experience they witnessed when they were in school. That’s how programs like Tennessee and Michigan stay in business. Not every program has a T. Boone Pickens (Oklahoma State) who is willing to essentially buy new facilities. Most are driven from nickle-and-dime support from a large donor base. The problem with Cincinnati is that programs in the SEC and Big Ten have been collecting from former students for decades. Now and then they strike gold with a single multi-million dollar donation but for the most part their funding comes from tapping a large group of people.
UC doesn’t have the luxury of either right now but long-term they can absolutely tap a growing fanbase especially with a university 40,000+ students large. It’s clear the future is bright for Bearcat football both on and off the field. All we need now is patience. Just look how far this program has come since joining the Big East almost a decade ago. Look at Varsity Village, look at the Sheakley Athletics Complex, look the major trophies in the Lindner Center. Heck just look at the Lindner Center! The progress UC athletics has made is extraordinary and this trend isn’t showing signs of stopping.