There are 32 days before Cincinnati kicks off the 2014 football season. A very late start, September 12, makes for a crawl when it seems every other program in the nation is ramping up. Some teams will play twice before Cincinnati plays once. Cincinnati is also at a bit of a disadvantage because they have 1 bye week during the season, which means no rest for the weary. That’s good as a fan because it means once football starts, it’s practically non-stop until the end of the regular season on December 6.
As a way to get everyone, hopefully, pumped for Toledo and the rest of the season, for the next 32 days Bearcats Blog is going to count down 32 reasons to be excited for the season. Today starts with one of the most obvious reasons to look forward to the start of the season. The list is in no particular order.
#32 – Cincinnati is the AAC favorite
The Bearcats were voted AAC favorites at AAC media day. Cincinnati hasn’t won a league title outright since the 2009 undefeated team. There have been a slew of shared Big East titles since then, but that hasn’t resulted in Cincinnati representing the league in prestige bowl games. While the AAC doesn’t really have a prestige bowl game this season, Cincinnati winning the league outright could result in the Bearcats representing the ‘Others’ in the major bowl games late 2014/early 2015. I do not know the bowl schedule and oh no google isn’t working so we can’t look it up. The point is that Cincinnati will have a great chance to be in a place where they can reach a height they haven’t reached in this current class.
Being the AAC favorite is a sign that Cincinnati is the top dog program in the eyes of the media. That’s a very important thing in this day and age because a lot of reality is perception. Being in a league where you have a tremendous climb to get a chance at the four team playoff before the season even starts is a terrific challenge for the program. One of the pluses about being named the top team is that if you go out and kick ass like the top team, people will look at what you are doing and rank you appropriately.
Being outside the ‘Big 5′ could really hurt an out of nowhere league champion. If you are thought of to be a fluke or not as good, a power conference team with a loss or two is going to be thought of as better, at least in my thinking. For example, say Memphis wins the league this season. Does anyone think a 10-2, 11-1 Memphis team is going to be considered for the playoff? There is no way. Would a 10-2, 11-1 team that was thought of to be the class of the league before the season started? Yes. Maybe not at 10-2, but I do think that an 11-1 team from the American would have a chance if they were the favorites and the highly regarded team.
You might say “UCF won the league with 1 loss last year, they weren’t in the USA Today top 10 AFTER beating the hell out of Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl, you are on crack.’ To that I would say, yes. But I would also say that if Louisville went undefeated, they absolutely would have finished in the top 5 of the polls at the end of the regular season and would have been considered for the national title game. Even after beating Louisville, UCF wasn’t thought of as the best team. UCF was 12th in the USA Today poll, Louisville was 15th. Louisville was as high as 6th before they lost to UCF. The BCS is different than a playoff, but an undefeated Louisville team last year would have been considered for a playoff. No way they wouldn’t have been.
That brings up the issue of hey, don’t lose if you are a conference favorite. That goes to Cincinnati, that goes to Boise State, and Marshall and UCF and Louisiana-Lafayette. But as we just saw last season, if you are the heavy favorite, you can gain traction in the polls and be in consideration as a top team in the country. Cincinnati’s schedule gives them a big time edge to run the table. They don’t play the preseason choice for #2, UCF. They host numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7, Houston, East Carolina, USF and Memphis. The toughest conference road game is at 5 SMU. The rest are against 8 Temple and the two teams tied for 9th, UConn and Tulane. That’s a very manageable slate. Anything less than a perfect conference run would be a bit of a disappointment.
Expecting perfection is never the best of expectations because going undefeated is really, really, really hard. That being said, Cincinnati has a great chance to do that in AAC play. The conference seems to run through Cincinnati this season, at least according to the media and me. That’s what you want. That’s a reason to be excited for the season.
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