Bearcats get rare ranking
Proud UC coach says team deserves it
BY BILL KOCH |
BKOCH@ENQUIRER.COM
There have been times when the University of Cincinnati football program was so downtrodden some members of the university community called for the school to drop the sport.
Attendance has been spotty over the years and media interest tepid, but there were always people at UC who cared enough about the program to keep it going, people who believed the school could succeed in football despite the program's many detractors.
All that hard work and perseverance paid off when the Bearcats checked in at No. 24 in the Associated Press poll.
UC coach Brian Kelly, who has digested a lot of Bearcat football history since he was hired last December, was surprised to hear how long it had been since a UC team had been ranked - 1976.
"Wow, that's a long time," he said. "I didn't know that was the case."
Kelly talked Sunday about having a lot more work to do, but he wasn't about to downplay what his team has accomplished during the first third of this season.
"I don't want to put an asterisk next to it because we deserve what we get and I'm proud of the fact that these kids have gotten some recognition," Kelly said. "I believe we can be a perennial Top 25 team."
Senior free safety Haruki Nakamura was in the first class recruited by Mark Dantonio when he took over the program from Rick Minter in December 2003. He suffered through a 4-7 season as a sophomore when the young Bearcats took their lumps.
But he said he and his teammates have seen this coming for the past few years.
"It's a proud moment for us to be recognized as a team in the Top 25," Nakamura said. "With the talent that we had the last three years growing up with each other, it was kind of obvious that eventually this team was going to be a Top 25 team."
Nakamura said the UC players are trying to take their ranking in stride so that they continue to work hard, but for long-time observers of this program, taking this distinction in stride is not an easy thing to do.
"It's a credit to all those people who worked so hard to get this program respectability and it's there now," said Jim Kelly, who's in his 17th year as the color analyst for UC radio broadcasts.
Jim Kelly, who played at UC from 1972 through 1975, was a graduate assistant coach on the 1976 team. Like this team, he said, that one was defense-oriented behind co-captains Howie Kurnick and Mike Woods, both of whom went on to play in the NFL.
Since that team was ranked, UC has gone 143-197-5 with eight different head coaches and has posted 18 losing seasons.
Most of the current UC players were recruited by Dantonio, but it took Brian Kelly to make them believe in themselves to the extent they do now.
"Coach Kelly is a winner," Nakamura said. "His attitude, his presence, the way he carries himself, make the players want to have a part of that. He's had a great history of winning, and he's brought it to the University of Cincinnati. We're trying to do everything he's telling us to do. We believe in his word right now."
The Bearcats play at San Diego State (1-2) Saturday.
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