No. 2 – 2008 -11-3 record
Brian Kelly’s second season at the helm saw him pick up Coach of the Year number two as his Bearcat squad won the Big East for the first time and climbed as high as 12th in the BCS rankings, good enough to send this Bearcat team to the Orange Bowl. Despite losing that game to Virginia Tech 20-7 if you had gone back in time 10 years prior and told UC fans watching Rick Minter’s 1998 2-9 Cincinnati Bearcats that within a decade you’d be rewarded with a BCS berth in the Orange Bowl, they would have burned you at the stake like a witch. That is what made this team so special, you could really see Kelly’s program take shape, even though they only averaged 25 points a game, the talent and the success was now front and center and this season only set the stage for what came next.
