Cincinnati Football: It’s Time To Regard The AAC As Less Molehill And More Mountain
By Chris Bains
When you look at the American Athletic Conference’s bowl slate, it’s all rather impressive. Houston is going to the Peach Bowl as the Group of Five’s highest ranked team and Tulsa is in the Independence Bowl because the bottom of the SEC was so terrible. The same goes for Cincinnati and the Hawaii Bowl, as they are filling in for the Conference USA.
Overall, a whopping eight out of 12 AAC teams are going bowling this year and, quite frankly, you’d have to feel pretty silly if you didn’t go to a postseason game in this conference. Honestly, so do I for how all of this played out compared to my preseason expectations. SPOILER ALERT: here’s where I eat all of the crow.
Coming into the 2015 season I, like most of us, had lofty expectations for Cincinnati’s football team and at the same time didn’t really regard their conference mates very highly. In my mind, it was the Bearcats winning the AAC by a wide margin then everybody else was fighting for the scraps. Heck, even the media was all over UC this year. UC received 29 out of 30 1st place votes in the East Division and 73% of 1st place votes to win the conference.
With all of that built up in my head, I really just didn’t a have a whole lot of respect for the rest of the AAC. Here’s how the other teams ranked for me:
- Navy
- A thousand miles of open space
- Houston
- Temple
- Memphis
- Errbody else
And, because karma, pretty much every team on that list beat Cincinnati, not including South Florida who drubbed the Bearcats 65-27 on their home turf.
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Part of me is of course a little jealous that UC isn’t reaping the rewards that Houston or even Temple did this year, with both winning their respective divisions with the former winning the AAC and earning a spot in the top 25. So too did Navy for that matter, while the Bearcats were sitting at a very disappointing 7-5. I probably couldn’t call myself a Cincinnati fan if I wasn’t irked by it.
But at the end of the day it’s clear that the bar has been raised in this conference on the backs of Navy, Houston, Temple, and Memphis, teams I general snubbed my nose at before the season began but by the time it ended Cincinnati was very much look up at in the standings. The AAC isn’t Conference USA pt two. Nor are they Power Five. Those conferences make that abundantly clear. But with Houston heading to the Access Bowl, Navy right behind them in the top 25 rankings, and the American at one point boasting four teams in the top 25, this is more like Power Five-B instead of Group of Five.
That’s the challenge Cincinnati faces. The American is clearly capable of putting multiple teams in contention for a New Years Day bowl and the Bearcats aren’t just going to walk all over them to get there. They’re in a conference full of strong programs, investing millions of dollars in their teams, stadiums, and coaches. UC needs to meet and exceed the expectations they’ve set, otherwise the Bearcats will quickly find themselves disrespected and irrelevant in the AAC.