Anger Rankings - 9/23

Welcome to this week’s edition of the “Anger Rankings”, our weekly column that will highlight what Cincinnati Bearcats fans are angry about each week.

Even though Bearcats football was off this past week, there is plenty to be angry about.

5. Bowl Projections

The latest ESPN bowl projections has Cincinnati in the Birmingham Bowl.

The opponents include a mid-tier Big Ten team, Indiana, and an extremely sneaky Army team. Neither team would move the needle for Cincinnati and the timing of the bowl (January 2nd) is weird. It’s early. It’s still September, so ultimately this is meaningless. Bearcats should just beat UCF on 10/4 and not worry about settling for Birminham or Gasparilla.

4. Indiana and Miami did something Cincinnati did not

It’s going to bother fans all year that we lost 42-0 vs Ohio State. It’s not that the Bearcats lost, it’s the score in which they lost by. What’s more upsetting is seeing inferior teams like Indiana and Miami score in consecutive weeks. Hoosiers put up 10 points at home in week 3, and lost 51-10. Miami scored 5 points in week 4. Actually, they scored the first 5 points of the game, before blowing the lead and surrendering 67 unanswered points.

3. No noon CBS finale for basketball

This may not matter to some people, but for the last five college basketball seasons, the Bearcats played the final Sunday of the regular season at noon on CBS against a division rival. That will not be the case in 2020. The season will end Saturday night at home vs Temple on CBS Sports Net, while Memphis and Houston play in the CBS noon time-slot on Sunday.

2. Facebook for Marshall

Do you have a Facebook profile? Do you use it to post pictures, like your friend’s pictures and post an occasional status about what you are up to? I am sure you do.

Well, this Saturday you can use Facebook for a much more exciting reason - to watch Cincinnati vs Marshall! That’s right, there is no television on Saturday. It’s a CBS Sports Net production but the game is available ONLY on Facebook.

Cool, huh? No. It’s stupid. It’s frustrating. Let the Sun Belt experiment with Facebook-only games. Not one of the top AAC teams vs top C-USA teams. Obviously, that’s the idea is to use two bigger brand names to sell this platform but I hate it. I know fans hate it. And it’s going to lead to plenty of anger on Saturday night.

1. UCF lost

There are certainly plenty of mixed reactions to this. UCF lost on Saturday in the regular season for the first since 2016. Why it’s upsetting is if anyone was going to take them down, it should have been the Bearcats on October 4th. And it still could happen. Playing at home, Cincinnati definitely has a chance to beat UCF but how valuable and meaningful will that win be now that UCF isn’t undefeated?

Sure, a win would put Cincinnati in the driver’s seat to win the AAC East division, but on a national stage, people will shrug as if UCF sucks and never existed and the win won’t have the same value, won’t resonate with national pundits and fans the way it would have if UCF was unbeaten.