While the sports world is still at a standstill and the next college football season still hangs in the balance, I thought it might be a good time to look backwards before we move forward. With that said I tried to rank the top 5 Cincinnati Bearcats football teams of the last 30 years (even if they have only been good the last 15 years). One quick thing about my rankings, I didn’t try to pair the teams I’ve picked against each other, (example: Could the 2019 Desmond Ridder led team beat the 2009 Tony Pike led team?) That can just be an overwhelming thought exercise. Instead, think of this as what I considered the five best SEASONS by UC teams in the last 30 years.
No. 5 = 2018 -11-2 record
The 2018 squad is what introduced Luke Fickell to the rest of the American Athletic Conference. Coming off a 4-8 rebuild the 2018 Bearcats would bounce back averaging 34 points a game. They would climb as high as 18th in the AP Poll, and they would finish the season ranked 24th. Good enough for Fickell to become AAC Coach of the Year, and the season was capped off with a thrilling Military Bowl win over Virginia Tech 35-31 that saw senior quarterback Hayden Moore come in and save the day after Desmond Ridder left with an injury. What kept this squad from being ranked higher despite having 11 wins for me was that they had a Strength of Schedule that ranked only 99 that year and one of the two losses was a blowout on the road to UCF, the only ranked team they played in the regular season (also a game I’ll never forget as I watched parts of it on my phone from my own wedding reception that night).
