TicketsCincinnati is an insular city.
Things that are normal here don't really exist elsewhere. No other city treats your high school alma mater like the top line of your CV. Nobody else understands chili on spaghetti or full-blown parades for spring baseball. The Crosstown Shootout, a year-round thorn in the side and one-week furor, has never truly gotten the attention it deserved. And how far do you have to drive out of downtown before you're unable to find someone who's heard of goetta? Fifty miles?
For better or worse, Cincinnati takes pride in this type of protective isolation. "The State of Cincinnati" is a phrase you'll sometimes hear. But these are all things worth sharing: Cincinnati chili, the Opening Day parade, and Nippert at Night.
Back in the earliest days of the university's cooperative education program, student-athletes on the football team would work jobs in downtown factories during the day, leaving little time for football practice in the daylight hours. As a workaround, the athletic department installed lights at Carson Field, the current site of Nippert Stadium. It wasn't much, but after painting the ball white to help with visibility, it was enough to practice.
By 1921 it was time to take the idea mainstream. The school installed incandescent lights in a system, fittingly, designed by a co-op student. They were bright enough that the Bearcats could stage a real football game after dark. In September 1923, the Bearcats played—depending on who you ask—the first major college football game under electric stadium lights.
As the program evolved over the following century, so did the Nippert At Night legacy. At first, it was because it was the one game where you could count on a good crowd. But in recent years, that hasn't been the case. Fans fill Clifton every weekend each fall.
We know these things, yet there's still nothing that can prepare you for the energy of these games. Maybe it's the anticipation of a tailgate at sunset, the thunder of the team storming onto the field under a sky filled with fireworks, or the energy of the student section already at full tilt before the opening kickoff.
Even in the program's fallow periods, the Bearcats were tough to beat under the lights, but that's only more true recently. Fickell's team hasn't lost in such games since 2017, a streak featuring UCLA, top-25 UCF, the 2020 AAC championship game, and a couple of stone-cold blowouts.
The East Carolina Pirates brought the house on Friday night, using 454 yards of offense and a relentless effort from senior QB Holton Ahlers to give the Bearcats all they could handle.
But for the innumerable time in the last 100 years, the lights and those beneath them saw victory and felt something hard to replicate elsewhere. Something that helps make us Cincinnati. Up Next The Bearcats take a trip to Philadelphia to face Temple this Saturday at 4 p.m. They'll return home for a Black Friday game against Tulane that could have conference championship game implications. Tickets are available HERE. Read More
Things that are normal here don't really exist elsewhere. No other city treats your high school alma mater like the top line of your CV. Nobody else understands chili on spaghetti or full-blown parades for spring baseball. The Crosstown Shootout, a year-round thorn in the side and one-week furor, has never truly gotten the attention it deserved. And how far do you have to drive out of downtown before you're unable to find someone who's heard of goetta? Fifty miles?
For better or worse, Cincinnati takes pride in this type of protective isolation. "The State of Cincinnati" is a phrase you'll sometimes hear. But these are all things worth sharing: Cincinnati chili, the Opening Day parade, and Nippert at Night.
Back in the earliest days of the university's cooperative education program, student-athletes on the football team would work jobs in downtown factories during the day, leaving little time for football practice in the daylight hours. As a workaround, the athletic department installed lights at Carson Field, the current site of Nippert Stadium. It wasn't much, but after painting the ball white to help with visibility, it was enough to practice.
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By 1921 it was time to take the idea mainstream. The school installed incandescent lights in a system, fittingly, designed by a co-op student. They were bright enough that the Bearcats could stage a real football game after dark. In September 1923, the Bearcats played—depending on who you ask—the first major college football game under electric stadium lights.
Substituting a great battery of searchlights for the sun, the University of Cincinnati eleven introduced a new game to pigskin followers and one which was the first to be played in gridiron history under similar conditions, when it defeated Kentucky Wesleyan at Carson Field last night, 17 to 0.
With the huge lights turning the night into bright daylight, every play could be followed in every detail, and punts and passes were as plain to the 5,000 spectators as if the game was being conducted with the sun shining brightly.
–– The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 30, 1923
As the program evolved over the following century, so did the Nippert At Night legacy. At first, it was because it was the one game where you could count on a good crowd. But in recent years, that hasn't been the case. Fans fill Clifton every weekend each fall.
We know these things, yet there's still nothing that can prepare you for the energy of these games. Maybe it's the anticipation of a tailgate at sunset, the thunder of the team storming onto the field under a sky filled with fireworks, or the energy of the student section already at full tilt before the opening kickoff.
LET'S GOOOOO‼️#Bearcats | @Jay_Thompson5 pic.twitter.com/G2kGQJNqp3
— Cincinnati Football (@GoBearcatsFB) November 12, 2022
Even in the program's fallow periods, the Bearcats were tough to beat under the lights, but that's only more true recently. Fickell's team hasn't lost in such games since 2017, a streak featuring UCLA, top-25 UCF, the 2020 AAC championship game, and a couple of stone-cold blowouts.
The East Carolina Pirates brought the house on Friday night, using 454 yards of offense and a relentless effort from senior QB Holton Ahlers to give the Bearcats all they could handle.
But for the innumerable time in the last 100 years, the lights and those beneath them saw victory and felt something hard to replicate elsewhere. Something that helps make us Cincinnati. Up Next The Bearcats take a trip to Philadelphia to face Temple this Saturday at 4 p.m. They'll return home for a Black Friday game against Tulane that could have conference championship game implications. Tickets are available HERE. Read More