TicketsI thought I was past it. Working in college athletics, it's easy to be too close to the action to get perspective on the whole ordeal—to get so deep in the process that you almost miss the bigger picture. When one of your teams is doing things they've never done, there's a lot of pressure to squeeze every ounce of it. We have been, and it's been an absolute blast.
We spent six weeks behind the scenes at Camp Higher Ground, telling a story we hoped might lead here. We left Clifton at 5 a.m., trucking through the Indiana wilderness to a concrete furnace in Bloomington where the Bearcats toppled the Hoosiers. We rode on a bus full of rambunctious football players to South Bend to see the Bearcats capture a game they were favored to win against a top-10 Notre Dame team. We welcomed hordes of rowdy students to The Commons in the wee hours of the morning to stage a national showcase for ESPN's College GameDay––on Homecoming weekend, no less.
The whole thing has been exciting, though maybe not emotional—more of a thrilling grind.
But as the game clock finished its slow drip at Historic Nippert Stadium on Saturday night, some 38,000 fans started holding their cell phone flashlights in the air.
This team, my team, had actually done it. These people, my people, realized it. They were basking in the glow.
And that's when it caught up with me. I had a lump in my throat.
A moment Cincinnati will never forget. 💡 pic.twitter.com/uKVpOXbikZ
— Cincinnati Bearcats (@GoBEARCATS) December 5, 2021
I still remember where I was sitting when I connected the dots and realized what was happening to the Big East. I was a freshman and had hardly even settled in at UC before the athletic future of my school started to look much different. By the time the dust settled and the College Football Playoff arrived, the chances of actually competing in the thing seemed like a pie-in-the-sky dream.
In 2021, all the stars aligned. Not only that, they did so in such a way that it––miraculously––rendered Sunday's selection show a mere formality. The Bearcats discovered their opponent on ESPN, but they shattered the glass ceiling in that special moment at Nippert Stadium. Thousands of deliriously happy fans swarmed over those old brick walls, their cheers echoing off a concrete bowl in the center of campus that's hosted nearly 1,300 football games over the last century.
I've always joked with people that I have a spiritual connection with that football stadium. It sounds silly, but if you care enough to be reading this, you know exactly what I mean. Over those 1,300 games, there's a weird kind of magic that's seeped its way into that dirty concrete.
It was poured thanks to a large donation from James N. Gamble, the grandfather of a football player named Jimmy who gave his life to play this game. When the stadium was dedicated in November of 1924, Gamble couldn't have possibly seen any of this coming. Still, his address to that rain-soaked crowd 97 years ago holds sparks of the magic that was swimming around in his grandson's namesake stadium on Saturday:
In presenting the completed stadium to the University of Cincinnati, I feel deeply that this structure includes far more than mere brick, stone, and mortar—but that, like the invisible iron rods and steel girders which bind these concrete walls into indestructible solidarity, there is here a certain invisible but ever-present spirit of a noble, loyal, democratic youth who played the game of life according to the rules of that game and in recognition of the rights of his fellow men.
I should be, indeed, very happy in the assurance that, in this vast structure, in these tons of iron, concrete, brick, and stone, erected here on Carson Field, if there might be embodied all that is fine and noble in our American youth, so that each successive generation of students might be mindful, at all times, that the primary object of this athletic field is to develop sound minds in sound bodies, so that at the conclusion of life's race, each contestant may truly say:
"I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith!"
The walls of this stadium will now and in future years resound with the joyful shouts of victories fairly won, as, no doubt, they will also witness heartbreaking defeats and bitter disappointments; but, remember, that whatever may be the result to the contending teams on this field, may it always be said that either in victory or defeat, good, clean sportsmanship is the sine quo non on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.
In this spirit, President Hicks, I deem it a great privilege to offer this stadium to the university, with the fond hope that victories in untold number may crown its loyal teams, and bring fame, honor, and glory to the fair name of the University and the city of Cincinnati.
I think there's a reason the university put the etching of Jimmy Nippert on the inside of that monument in the south end zone. Look at all those photographs from Saturday, and there you'll see him, in the background, perched atop the student section, looking down on Carson Field and the tens of thousands of fans that blanketed it.
All those "victories in untold number" have led us here, finally. And how can you not get choked up about that?
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