Question: UC is off to a 10-0 start, besting their previous best start of 9-0 in 1951, a team that finished 10-1. Who was the only opponent to beat that 1951 Bearcat team?
Answer at the bottom of the page.It's a very very good season to be a football fan in Cincinnati.
It's rarely been like this. In fact, it's never been like this.
It started the first time the UC Bearcats won a couple of games and then the Bengals did the same thing on the same weekend.
Somebody would ask me, "When was the last time this happened?"
And I didn't know.
The next week, another win, UC moves up in the polls and the Bengals begin to top the division.
Again they ask, "How long has it been since this happened?"
But I still didn't know.
Then came the crowds, a sellout for the Bearcats. A day later, a sellout for the Bengals.
So I needed to look up just when the last time it was that this happened.
The hair was long on campus in the '70s, the team was pretty good but interest was lukewarm at best.
A lot of that went into the young Bengals, who won the division in only their third year in the league.
The fans were flocking to the riverfront and during the '70s the Bengals posted double digit wins three times.
On campus, Tony Mason did well, three straight winning seasons.
But not many seats were occupied back then, there was a fear that college football couldn't survive in a pro football town.
Mason split for Arizona and the Bearcats fumbled to mediocrity.
The 80's belonged solely to the Bengals. There was Super Bowl XVI and XXIII.
At UC, football was handed to five different coaches with only two winning seasons. Hope was sliding away.
And on the riverfront, the Bengals started missing their mark, losing players, shufflign coaches, the heady '80s turned to the no-win '90s.
The lost generation in Bengal land had begun. They wouldn't win again for 15 years.
The mood improved at UC when Rick Minter stuck around, got some players and made it to a bowl game.
Imagine that, it was in Boise, but a bowl game nevertheless.
And now we're in the new millennium where Brian Kelly has energized the Bearcats and Marvin Lewis has brought a new disciplined attitude to the Bengals.
So when I'm asked that nagging question when was the last time this happend with both teams winning, getting national attention and drawing big crowds, I say enjoy it Cincinnati. It's never happened like this before.
Answer: The Xavier Musketeers
