'Cats make case for themselves on national stage

DVR is truly a revelutionary tool. Really. What many thought only 10 or 15 years ago to be impossible is now positively common and the DVR phanominan has completely changed the viewing experience for sports fans.

My work schedule is comprised largely of night shifts through the week. This means that instead of watching the Big East Showdown between Cincinnati and South Florida Thursday night I had to attend the Meet the Candidates event for Perry Township Trustee in East Liberty, Ohio.

I spent a fair amount of time during the days leading up to this game trying to decide how I'd approach experiencing it.

That is, do I insist on text updates from friends, follow the Gamecast on ESPN and try to find some postgame reaction on the radio for my drive home?

Or...

Do I completely ostracize myself from the rest of the sports world, set the DVR, be sure to extend the end time by an hour so I catch the entire game and pretend it's live as I watch it first thing the next morning over a cup of coffee and a bowl of my favorite sugar-coated cereal?

Generally speaking, I choose the former option; I think keeping up with the game is a richer, more honest experience because you're feeling the same way about the game as you would if you were watching it on replay, but you can take some solace knowing that you're not alone in your trepidation, or jubilation, whatever the case may be.

There's just something to be said for experiencing a game live even if you can't watch it first-hand; it's that commaraderie with your fellow fans that's a big part of the fun.

That said, I do think it's easier to grasp the overall flow of the game when watched via the DVR. Highlights are nice, but they rarely tell the entire story, a lot of times the real story in the game is within the details, the incomplete passes, the one-yard runs, etc.

And because I wanted to really get a good look at Cincinnati I made the somewhat difficult to decision to fire up the DVR.

So, what most of you reading this knew before you went to bed last night I learned about an hour ago.

The eighth-ranked Bearcats grabbed a 10-point first half advantage on the road last night and, with their backup quarterback leading the way for much of the second half, built the lead in the final two quarters en route to a 34-17 victory over previously 21st-ranked South Florida.

I think there were a couple of things we could derive from last night's game in Tampa.

The Big East is a competitive conference. I'll grant you that with only eight teams in the conference it may not be as deep as the SEC, Big 10 or ACC but the elite Big East teams can play with elite teams in any other conference.

Thursday's game looked like a game between the eighth-and 21st-ranked teams in the country.

Sure, there were points during the game when each team looked pretty ugly, but neither team had its full complement of players, either.

SFU was missing its starting quarterback, senior Matt Grothe, who hasn't played since a 59-0 lambasting of Charleston Southern in week three. Instead, the Bulls were running out true freshman B.J. Daniels who looks more like Juice Williams than SFU fans may care to admit.

The Bearcats were without the services of their fifth-year senior signcal caller, Tony Pike who was lost with a sprained left wrist.

For Pike it was an inopportune time (wait, there's an opportune time?!) to sprain his wrist as there were 25 NFL scouts among those in attendence last night.

The Bearcats, however, didn't really miss a beat on offense as backup quarterback Zach Collaros engineered a trio of scoring drives that included a 75-yard scamper to the endzone on his first offensive play.

The Bearcats looked awfully good last night.

I think it's really sad that teams from so-called lesser conferences have to, not only, win the games they play, but earn beauty points for doing it.

ESPN aired a pair of top-10 teams in consecutive nights and everyone's favorite disclaimer throughout each telecast was, "If you're going to be the (insert ranking here)th team in the country, you can't/have/need/ to..."

It's really not fair. And it's especially not fair to Cincinnati and South Florida because they play in a BCS conference. That is, the winner of the Big East is assured a BCS Bowl bid in the same way the Big 10 or Pac 10 is.

There's not much anyone can do about it, I suppose. This is the world we live in and teams like UC and South Florida just have to deal with it.

The Bearcats unquestionably proved themselves worthy of their ranking last night.

Raymond James Stadium was borderline hostile last night and UC was able to go in there and get a victory, even after looking so bad in the first quarter.

The fact the 'Cats struggled doesn't mean they're unworthy of top-billing; quite the opposite is true. The fact that Cincinnati could struggle in the early stages of that game, come back and make the adjustments they needed to on both sides of the ball, proves they are worthy of that ranking.

Furthermore, Cincinnati did all this against a team that also looked like it belonged. This point ties into my initial point about the Big East as a conference, but USF clearly belonged on the same field as UC.

That Bulls defense suffocated Cincinnati through the first 23 minutes of that game and Daniels spent much of the first two quarters making mincemeat of a bewildered Bearcat secondary.

The Bearcats have six games remaining on their schedule and they'll be favored to win all of them. Their toughest remaining test is one of the only two remaing road games for UC when they travel to Pitt to close the season.

As far as I can tell, if UC wins its remaining games and is not playing in the BCS Championship Game, a crime has occurred..

Some of you reading this may be getting winded as you yell at me about why the Bearcats just aren't on the same level as Virginia Tech, Ohio State or Oklahoma but I'd submit to you that is a charge that cannot possibly stick unless Cincinnati is given the opportunity to play in a game of that magnitude, especially since they come from a BCS Conference.

Now, I'll submit to you that if there are three undefeated teams at the end of this season, UC could conceivably get left out in the cold.

For example, if Florida and Texas are also undefeated at the end of the season, it would probably stand to reason that UC would be not get into the title game.

That's not what I'm clamoring about.

I'm arguing that if, say, Florida is the one of two undefeated teams and Cincinnati is the other, the Bearcats belong in the championship game over any one-loss team.

I guess that means we pull for Oklahoma Saturday afternoon.