CINCINNATI — Go ahead. Combine Florida, Alabama, Texas and TCU, the only four teams ahead of Cincinnati in the BCS standings. Now throw in the rest of the programs throughout college football, and it still won’t matter.
You won’t find a collection of teams — let alone one inidually — with more riveting stories than those surrounding Cincinnati. Come to think of it, the 2009 Bearcats have the best set of storylines of all-time for a season. Despite a wretched existence during their 123 years of playing football at a place more noted for the guy who designed the Golden Gate Bridge and Oscar Robertson, the Bearcats are in the national championship discussion with a 10-0 record out of nowhere.
That’s the best of those stories.
“My grandpa and my aunt and my uncle had season tickets to different Cincinnati games when I was growing up here in town, and they always had an extra ticket, so I was able to tag along,” said Tony Pike, now the Bearcats’ starting quarterback. “At that time, it was more of a basketball school, so we came to a lot of basketball games. But I remember coming to football games, and they were almost giving away tickets. They never packed the stadium, and you always could sit anywhere you wanted.”
No more, not with 35,000-seat Nippert Stadium stuffed, loud and colorful these days whenever the Bearcats take its 107-year-old field.
Yep, that’s the best story, but only if you’re not talking about Pike and the rest of Cincinnati ’s quarterbacks. Pike is a likely All-America candidate, and he was deep into the Heisman Trophy talk until he missed time recently with an arm injury. Just so you know, Pike was fifth on the depth chart last year. And his replacement, Zach Collaros (pictured), managed a crazy passing efficiency rating of 195.53 by throwing for 1,434 yards and 10 touchdowns in four games this season. And Chazz Anderson, the Bearcats’ third-string quarterback, is 2-0 overall as a starter.
Maybe that isn’t the best story, because the quarterbacks story isn’t even Pike’s favorite story. “It’s the Mardy Gilyard story,” said Pike, referring to Gilyard, the wide receiver who ranks as a primary reason for an explosive offense that scores moments after the ball moves from the center to the quarterback’s hands.
Anyway, Gilyard spent several months among Cincinnati ’s homeless — literally. He lost his scholarship after he skipped classes as a freshman, and he became academically ineligible to play. So, while working four jobs to get back into school, he often slept with an empty stomach around parts of campus in his 2000 Pontiac …
Read more from the original source
Leave a Reply