UC/USF game week begins today

The heat is on. In one week the UC Bearcats and South Florida Bulls will battle for Big East supremacy in Tampa in front of thousands of live viewers, and millions at home on ESPN’s Thursday Night Football broadcast.

Brian Bennett of ESPN.com says it’s possibly the Big East game of the year. And you’d be hard pressed to argue against that fact at this point. The only two Big East teams that are ranked are USF and UC. The two biggest non-conference victories from the Big East this season fall to USF’s defeat of Florida State two weeks back and UC’s downing of Oregon State three weeks ago.

And, although much of the talk this week has centered around who is the better team in Ohio, (Coach Kelly stated, “People ask me about Ohio State and us now. We may have a better team at the moment, but it’s going to take us three games at Nippert to draw what (OSU) gets for their spring game.”) the upcoming game in Florida is much more important to the big picture.

To start the season UC drubbed Rutgers in New Jersey. UC took the conference lead with a 1-0 record. In order to get back to a BCS bowl game, the ‘Cats must beat USF, or hope for another year like last year where everyone beats up on everyone else in conference. And if you ask me, that’s unlikely to happen this season.

In fact, Lee Corso says UC will lose sooner or later. He gave his trademark, “Not so fast my friend,” to every fan of the red and black, but added that no one else will go undefeated either. “Maybe the only team that will do it is Boise and they don’t play anybody,” he said.

So, it’s another week of ‘business as usual’ at the two schools. And I’m hoping that next Thursday night the Bearcats keep rolling like Bachman-Turner Overdrive and “Take Care of Business”.
---------------------------------
Tomorrow I’m going to try tell you about the most interesting storyline of the week, one that will be covered through and through as the UC/USF matchup nears. USF defensive coordinator Joe Tresey—former Bearcat defensive coordinator—is “politely declining” interviews with Bill Koch from the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Maybe he'll "gladly submit" to an interview with his favorite video guy from UC. Not a bad idea to give it a shot, right? More on that tomorrow.