TicketsAs the September sun shone down on Clifton Saturday, The Grid filled to capacity with fans ostensibly on campus to see a football game.
The Bearcats were back on Carson Field to follow a 15th-straight Victory Bell win with a tuneup against Murray State before embarking on one of the most pivotal stretches of football in program history. They're going to spend another week ranked in the top 10, a distinction that's starting to feel shockingly normal. Next week they'll travel to face a good Indiana team. Two weeks after that, Notre Dame. In a month, UCF comes to town for a sequel to a classic night at Nippert.
So, ordinarily, Saturday would have been about football.
But Friday the University of Cincinnati announced a move to the Big 12 Conference. Depending on who you ask, it was the culmination of weeks, years, or centuries of work. Really it was all of that. For an athletic department that's spent the overwhelming majority of its existence wandering through conference alignment wilderness—the Ohio Athletic Conference, the Buckeye Athletic Association, the MAC, the Missouri Valley, the Metro, the Great Midwest, Conference USA, the Big East, and the American—and succeeded on top of that shifting ground, Friday was validation. The Bearcats had earned their place.
This is for everyone who believes,
— Cincinnati Bearcats (@GoBEARCATS) September 10, 2021
And a message to those who don't. #Big12Bearcats | https://t.co/wOMVufPgLY pic.twitter.com/qr7kxlZo6p
It made Saturday a strange kind of experience. A football game did happen, and Nippert Stadium roared for each of three touchdowns from RB Jerome Ford, but it was also the rare day where a university president could be mobbed at a tailgate for arriving with t-shirts bearing a conference's logo, or a school could turn heads across the country with a flag.
As a department, we work hard to make our events the you-need-to-be-there type, but Saturday didn't need any extra theatrics. For just one day football took a backseat while we celebrated all we've accomplished and what we'll have the opportunities to do in the future. It was a payoff for the work of numerous university leaders, past and present, and the success of countless student-athletes across so many great years.
It was a party at a football game. A perfect day in Cincinnati, and not just the weather.
UP NEXTCincinnati's next two games take place in Indiana. First, a Saturday matchup against the Hoosiers and then an October 2 showdown with #12 Notre Dame following a bye week.
The team returns to Cincinnati on Friday, October 8 to face Temple. Tickets are sold out but can be purchased on the secondary market through our official provider, StubHub, HERE.