Two Cents & Sense: Thoughts On UC vs UCF, The Continuing Famine

(Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports)

The Bearcats lost 24–3 to fall to 4–6 on the season. They’ll need to get past two good teams if they want to make a bowl game this year. I think I’m just about officially broken. I watched every minute of the game today, and I’m not giving up, but holding onto hope and optimism has become essentially impossible. I just want these guys to finish well, whatever that may be.

Positives:

• Dredrick Snelson. The guy who scored UCF’s first touchdown is named Dredrick Snelson, which is one of the best names I’ve heard in a while.

Negatives:

• The offense is downright anemic. The streak without a touchdown stretched to 10 quarters, which is legitimately impossible for me to imagine. I’ve always known the UC offense to be the type to rack up yards, if not points. How we’ve managed to fall so quickly, I don’t know. If my math is correct, that’s just about 154 minutes of game clock since the last touchdown. To make matters worse, the Bearcats have scored just six points total in that stretch.
• The Bearcats are the worst second half team in America. I’ll update this when I get complete stats for the rest of FBS play. After last week, UC was tied for dead last in second half scoring with Vanderbilt. Today, they threw up another goose egg, so it’s only going to get worse. In Cincinnati’s six losses this season, they’re being outscored 105–6 in the second half. That’s incomprehensible.
• The Bearcats keep getting blown out. During the Tuberville tenure, the Bearcats have lost to unranked opponents by at least 21 points on nine occasions. That matches the total that Rick Minter, Mark Dantonio, Brian Kelly, and Butch Jones shared from 2000 through 2012. The program is falling fast, and quickly getting lapped by weaker teams, as evidenced by UCF securing bowl eligibility against UC today after going winless in 2015.
• The national media is finally noticing. I suppose this could be a good or bad thing, but I generally would rather not have all media attention towards my alma mater centered around how quickly the football program went from relevance to turmoil. Between the loss last week, Tuberville’s blow up at a fan, and the shoddy effort today, it seems like just about all media outlets are calling for a coaching change in Clifton. I agree, but the negative publicity is still hard to watch.
• Attendance next week is going to be brutal. This is going to be the hardest part for me. There are a lot of seniors on this team who I’ll look back on fondly. Gunner Kiel, Tion Green, Nate Cole, Alex Pace, Zach Edwards, etc. These guys gave their blood, sweat, and tears to my alma mater, and I just know that they’ll be playing out their last game in front of an empty stadium after suffering through a pair of brutal seasons to close their careers. If you have a ticket, please show up or give it to somebody who will. These kids deserve one last effort from us as fans.

See you at Nippert. Go Bearcats. Beat Memphis.