scott goes behind enemy lines to get to know UC with Viva La Cats
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Boscoe’s Boys
Summer School Behind Enemy Lines: Cincinnati
This episode is brought to you by Beyond Natural Pet Food. Beyond Pet Food helps me care for what matters, my pets and my world. They help me nourish my pets with high-quality natural ingredients, like wild-caught salmon and organic free-range chicken. Beyond also has responsible sourcing practices and a long-term partnership with the Nature Conservancy. Beyond Pet Food, your pet, your world, learn more at BeyondPetFood.com. College students get 50% off Walmart Plus memberships, so you can get things like talkies, lab notebooks and socks delivered straight to your dorm. DLN September 13th to join now, Walmart Plus, Free Delivery on College Essentials, $35 minimum for free delivery for eligible college and grad students, and it's $913.24, seats are in subject to change. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. We're driven by the search for better, but when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search, match, with Indeed. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging, so you can connect with candidates faster. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/mbo. Terms and conditions apply. It's the moment of the evening, every key state fan and joys, little down and board a whiskey. Back open a liqueur, please put your hands together and make a little noise for your favorite wildcatters, the handsome Bosco boys. Boom, the boys are back and this is the second to last episode in our Behind Enemy Lines Summer School Series and this is going to be representing what will be case states, including your night in Manhattan and the first football competition between Cincinnati and Case State. I think since the early 90s, where I think Kevin Lockett had his coming out party at Nippert Stadium way back in the day. So I was scouring the internet and I'm thinking to myself, okay, who can I get to talk about Cincinnati? And then I hit my head against the wall and said, Scott, you have the best Cincinnati fan podcast in the 1012 network. What are you thinking? So I reached out to Viva Lacats and Steve Maurer, one of the two from the best Cincinnati podcast in the game is joining me, Steve, welcome to the show. I believe this is your first appearance on Bosco's voice. So welcome. How are you doing? You know, you and I were talking a little bit, you know, a little bit of craziness in the world of, you know, technology and we'll just leave it at that. That's a little Easter egg for folks to figure out when we're recording this. But how are you doing today, my friend? Scott, it is a pleasure to be on. I am a fan of the show as well. You guys run the best podcast. I will say, you know, the other podcast, if they want to have me on, but you're the first one to have me on. So I'll say that you are the best 1012 network podcast other than Phil, you know, because I love Phil. I love Philip and he just did. So this is like I said, we'll be publishing on the 25th. So last week as folks are listening, Philip Slavin just did the rankings week absolute powerhouse of shows. I was part of the most impactful players episode and I know his was Shahan and Andy power ranking all 16 teams went over two hours. So Philip's the best and I'm pumped to have you on and I'm pumped, you know, before we talk specifically about Cincinnati sports, this is kind of adjacent. I feel like Cincinnati bear cat fans are the only ones who are truly appreciating the rise of Travis Kelsey being the most popular person in America, or I guess second most popular person in America outside of us, Kansas City Chiefs fans. So as a bear cat fan, how fun has it been to see the meteoric rise of the Kelsey brothers over the last five years? Yeah, it's been great and just because like five years ago, they were only doing like small like old spice ads, you know, and that's an easy one for them because PNG is located in Cincinnati. That's an easy to collaboration. And then to see their meteoric rise from last year to now, like the podcast started out last year before Taylor Swift was even involved with Travis. So they've, I've really enjoyed everything they've been doing. And like you said, the best part about it though is that the Bengals fans who are not, you see fans get upset when Travis and Jason visit the city of Cincinnati. And to be honest, Scott, I, I like the Bengals as well, but I am bear cats first for, for most things, you know, so it is, it makes me laugh to just when people are getting upset about, you know, two guys who happen to play on other national football league teams visiting their alma mater and people were like, Oh, no, you know, it's the Chiefs player. You can't have that. I'm like, he just raised all this money for our NIL department. And so that guy in particular, the Bearcat fans who are listening, know who I'm talking about. He's an Ohio State fan. So he also, he's like kind of like, like double ex nay. But the funniest part about that was he said that I, well, I'm not, I don't want Travis Kelsey in my city. And I'm just thinking like, it's not your city. It's honestly probably his, like he's like a lot more people know him than you. So I have really enjoyed like the rise of the Kelsey brothers and you know, Jason now that he's going to be on ESPN a lot of is, it's going to be great just for us. But it was really weird a couple of years ago to hear Colin Calherd say, you know, Cincinnati probably has the three best players at their position in the national football league with sauce gardener, Travis Kelsey and Jason Kelsey. And like that, you know, where that clip went, it went right at the front of our recruiting videos every year. So it's been pretty cool. Yeah. To watch the Kelsey brothers do their thing. Yeah. And it's not only that I'm a case state over chiefs guys while I love the chiefs and I love in the Kansas City Metro, but it is fun to see, you know, some of that discourse. Luckily for me, I, I don't think that the case stage has had any like superstars who have gone on to play for the Broncos or for the Raiders or anything like that. And I couldn't imagine ever getting worked up, you know, of a college, you know, superstar coming back to sport their NIL. I don't think any Ohio state fans will be listening to this, but they're, they are the most, you know, in like most sensitive bunch, you would think for being, you know, a true blue blood. I'm not going to try to take anything away from, but for being how big they are giants in the world of college football, they act like patriotic toddlers, you know, they're acting like they're trying to scrap for everything. So they are a sensitive group. So, you know, if you want to clip that and send that out to any Ohio state fans at Scott Wildcat on Twitter and I'll say it right to your face. So I hope you guys continue to get under the skin of Ohio state fans. We'll get into this and, you know, 12 months ago, it was Cincinnati along with the other three joining the big 12. It was a rough first season in football. Had an NIT run in the gauntlet that was big 12 men's basketball. How do you feel things are right now compared to where they were 12 months? Are you still feeling good about the move or how did that first season compare to what was, you know, close to a decade in the American? Yeah. So I definitely feel great about the move. It's nothing about being in the big 12. We love the Cincinnati fans. We love the big 12. We love being a part of the discourse. I had to just put a Kansas troll in his place last week because he said that Cincinnati brought the least value of the eight newer schools to the league. And so I had a, this is how much I'm missing football right now, Scott. I had about an hour long conversation with this person about TV ratings and college football playoff. Like, you know, so it's nothing about the league. We love being a part of the league and the problem is that our, our athletic director and our athletic department really pushed this idea of being day one ready for the big 12. And, you know, not that the director's cup really matters overall, but it's a good gauge of how well your athletic department is doing as a whole. And Cincinnati was the only power five team to finish outside of the top 100. And they finished at 259th out of all athletic departments across the country. Now, we don't play as many sports as say, like a Stanford or a Texas, for example, but to say that we kind of got the brunt of, you know, what, how hard life was going to be in the big 12 pretty early. And I think it's only a good thing, you know, get that out of the way, really understand where we're at in this league. I think the problem is as well is that this should be an exciting time for all the programs. But, you know, you take an early losing season and a lot of different sports, especially football, it should be a really exciting time for basketball and it is basketball is really done well with some of the additions they've made on the roster. And coach Miller is probably the favorite son out of all the coaches that you see right now, just because of how well he's doing within the recruiting and he's saying the right things. And I think the problem with football is that, you know, when we were officially initially invited and accepted our invitation to the big 12, you know, we had Luke Fickle. That was our, we were coming off the Peach Bowl appearance and then that was the year we ended up going to the Cotton Bowl and the college football playoff. We felt that if, you know, Fickle were to stay, this meteoric rise was just going to keep on going as we entered a power conference. And then, you know, he decided to leave and the higher that we brought in Scott Satterfield is just not making anyone really inspired, you know. It felt like a safe hire and our athletic director does want to be safe on things, which is fair. I understand like, you know, you're not, like, you're not trying to go too off the board a lot, but it's just not been like the most exciting thing for people, especially when we have Louisville fans as our rivals and maybe potential future conference mates again, say like telling us, you know, how glad they were that they, we took them off their hands and then their immediate success also kept the Bearcats down. So I don't think it's anything about the league, Scott. We're all very excited and happy to be in the league and especially, you know, with how other plates are moving around college football. It's, it's a great position to be in in this league. And we're just happy to, you know, kind of be in the club now where we're in the door. So I think the programs will eventually have to improve, obviously, if we want to be like an actual contributing member of the conference. But, you know, first year, I think it was probably the worst, like, since I was probably the worst athletic department out of the whole big 12. So not great from a fan standpoint. This is it. We've got an AMEX Platinum Pro on our hands, ladies and gentlemen. We haven't seen anyone relax like this before in the Centurion Lounge. Is he connecting to complimentary Wi-Fi? Oh my, look at that, he is. And you will not believe where he's going next. The AMEX dedicated card member entrance for the win. Unbelievable. When you get travel perks with AMEX Platinum, you're part of the action. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms apply. Learn more at americanexpress.com/with AMEX. Well, you led into what was going to be my next question. I think there's a lot of optimism for, I have in my sheet UC basketball. Actually, I'm going to go back to something. I always call you guys UC because anytime I try to type Cincinnati, I misspell it and my Apple autocorrect isn't like figuring it out. So if people aren't going to spell out Cincinnati, do you want it to be UC? Sincey, which is C-I-N-C-I or C-I-N-C-Y? Yeah. Because I see it all these different ways. You guys aren't all up in your feelings like UCF or Central Florida fans. Like if you do something wrong, you have 20 of their burners in your account. But I always just go UC and I'm like, okay, I'm just going to ask. It's kind of outing myself for always being a bad speller. But what's your preferred, you know, abbreviation for Cincinnati? So yeah, sincey is great, sincey with a Y, I use the UC. But I understand that there are other colleges somehow that are allowed to use the UC. I don't like acronym, you know? No, Cincinnati is not UC, baby. Exactly. But yeah, sincey with a Y is great. The Central Florida fans in response to us calling them Central Florida or Golden Knights have started using sincey with an I because they know like some people like get upset by it. So that's just another, you know, kind of needling back and forth with each other, which I appreciate. But yeah, UC is great. Okay. Sincey with a Y is great too. Yeah. I'm going to be sure and, you know, because you guys aren't as annoying central Florida fans. Well, I was going to say too, the official K-State Twitter, a football Twitter account when they were doing their schedule reveal with the family feud game, they spelled the Cincinnati name wrong on the official like video. Well, in sports at big 12 media days, I also had it wrong. So it's like, I'm trying to, I'm trying to myself, make sure I don't do it. So I originally was going to bring that up in my, in before I started asking these specific questions and then I'm reading through my outlines like, okay, I forgot to, to make this, you know, a little anecdotal question at the beginning. So there we go. I got my answer. But, but I think basketball, there's optimism there showing up in like preseason top 25 stuff, which I know there's some K-State fans and K-State media folks are like, okay, Cincinnati is there in K-State. It's not what's going on. It's going to be a conversation for November. We'll worry about that when the time comes. But with football, when you guys hired Scott Sadersfield, I was flabberg, I was floored. I was like, what is going on? Because Cincinnati has this history of finding the next hot name. Like you can go throughout the history and everyone has some bad hires. But if you look through, there's so many big names in the world of college football, so many successful names that were the next up and coming. I was shocked that you guys decided to go for a kind of a, you know, get out of jail free car, restart the clock with Sadersfield instead of finding that next up and coming guy. It didn't make sense to me. So am I missing something there or do Cincinnati fans kind of agree with me? But it's like, hey, he's our guy now. So it is what it is. It's the latter. Yeah. It's kind of like, well, all right, you hired this guy. So just for some historical contacts for the K-State fans who are listening, Cincinnati has done really well in the past with recruiting. And this is really since the turn of the century, recruiting the 300 mile radius around Cincinnati. There's a lot of great high school football in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. And really, you know, Cincinnati has not had a consistent conference home. So it's not really mattered to us where we're recruiting from, as long as you're keeping within that 300 mile radius, those kids and getting them in the door. And you know, they've had success with coaches from central Michigan twice, a coach who used to be at Ohio State and then went to Michigan State in Mark D'Antonio and then another former Ohio State defensive coordinator in Luke Fickle. So the only two coaches that have really not been successful is Texas Tech fans cover your ears. A certain senator from the State of Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, not that great, focused on Florida recruiting instead of really getting himself within the high school area in Cincinnati. That's the other thing too, for people who may not know, Cincinnati high schools, there's not just one or two public schools, there's a lot of private and public, a lot of the, and so there's a lot of different talent from across the city. And so you really have to be, you know, knocking on doors, making yourself available. And the coaches who have, I'll just say the coaches who have been successful here have done that. And we currently have zero top 50 Ohio recruits in our recruiting class right now. So I don't want to just like, give them the death knell right now, but I just don't think Saturnfield is going to be the guy in the long run. And I get it. It's hard to follow the guy who was the guy Luke Fickle has the most wins in the Cincinnati program. This is also a program that's really, if you boil it down, I've only been incredibly successful over the past 24, 25 years. We have not really had a great history of success before the turn of the century. So it's, but in that vein, I would have wanted us to continue that pipeline and say, maybe hire like a Jason Campbell from Toledo or there was jokes about maybe hiring Matt Campbell, you know, bringing him back to Ohio because he's, because he's a native. So I don't think, I don't want to just completely poo poo out our field. I think there's a couple positive things about him that could turn into something. I just don't think, like I mentioned earlier, the excitement is there. And I think that's left a lot of Cincinnati fans wanting for more from, from that hiring process and from his coaching in the first year. Now the talent pool was not there last year and it's, and it's growing. It's getting better and we do have some talented players, but this isn't the American conference anymore. We're in the big 12. Everybody's talented. So last one, you know, centered around Sadr's field before we move in and talk about this upcoming season, if it is another rough year, you talked about how the administration wants to play things safe. Is there any scenario in which they'd pull the trigger and fire them after just two years or is it like, Hey, you know, we're hoping for the best, but even if it bottoms out, we know we have at least one more year with them. It's going to be another year. It would really have to be something catastrophic, like a two and 10, two and 10 year or just a complete bottoming out for them to fire him. One just because, you know, while we're not paying buyouts right now for many coaches and Cincinnati is lucky to not have to be paying buyouts for any former football or basketball coaches at this time. It's still just that, you know, it's your second year in the big 12 and like his buyout is he signed a $22 million contract for six years and figures just, it's a full 100% of the buyout until the end of year three and he's a Jimmy Sexton client. So it's, you know, that contract is kind of like positioned against you and then same with the staff and everything. So I don't think it will happen this year. I do think that there, he can really win himself as some fans this year. There's, I don't think they're going to give him like, if he really does well, I don't think they would give him a contract extension because you still want to have that flexibility on the back end, but I also don't see them making a move on him this year. Unfortunately for the UC fans, we're probably going to have a full three years and then we'll evaluate at the end of that. Awesome. Before we get into the next set of questions, this podcast and the entire 10, 12 network is brought to you by our friends at Charlie hustle, Charlie hustle specializes in vintage inspired hometown and collegiate gear that produces some of the best case state and Cincinnati gear in the game. 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So if you make it up for the big 12 tournament, slide my DMS and we'll go check out the Charlie hustle experience together, my friend. Yeah, I would love to go next year. I think like it helps too when you've got a good team. So that will definitely be a good part of going to the college. Well, you guys made a nice little run there, you know, you got KU at the right time, but you know, it was a nice little run. I'll ask you this. I said we weren't in the talk basketball, but I'll ask you this because you guys were on the bubble as well. I know come bubble time, like come selection Sunday, there were so many bid Steelers. I wasn't holding my breath at that point. I think on the selection show, they said they're like three or four or five bid Steelers. And in the past five seasons, there was three altogether did Cincinnati fans on selection Sunday where they think, all right, hey, we might hear a name called or was like, all right, let's get this over with. And see if we're playing in the NIT. Again, more of the latter, we were kind of expecting the NIT appearance just because there were three bad losses that you see took at West Virginia, home to Oklahoma State. And then Oklahoma, maybe not if it was a bad loss, but it was not a great, it could have been a, okay, win this one and then you're fine. But that was just another fire on the piece of wood on the fire and then I kind of just ruined the chances. We, we had an idea that we would probably have to reach the corporate championship game of the big 12 tournament to maybe have a chance at, but, you know, just looking on bracket matrix at the end of last season, we were, there was maybe one or two guys who were even considering UC at an 11 seed. So we kind of had the idea after the right before the West Virginia loss because we had just played Texas Tech on the road, beat them first home loss for Texas Tech under Grant McCaslin and flying high, feeling good. And then of course, you know, just get dragged back down by West Virginia. So I think we kind of knew, but, you know, it was at least there and then you got to make that run to get there. So if we had beat Baylor, maybe they had a little bit of a better chance, but it was, we kind of knew. Yeah. So again, we'll be playing twice in basketball season. We'll talk more about that come November, December. All right. Let's get into it. Well, we're what two weeks out as a recording, probably a week and a half out when this gets published away from pre-season camp opening, what are the expectations among Cincinnati fans? You know, we spend a lot of time at the top kind of being like, a little doom and gloom and that's coming from my outsider perspective, from the inside, you know, with the black and red shades, the Jordan jump man jerseys, you know, all that type of stuff, all the good stuff going on in Cincinnati. Where your guys' expectations, is it like, hey, we think everyone else hasn't wrong. We're not doomed to be in the bottom four, bottom five, or is it, hey, keep your head down, maybe get to a bowl game, just kind of give me the range of expectations for this season. Yeah. So on our podcast, which you nicely called the best Cincinnati podcast and, you know, you said it, Scott, so I will not retort that, you know, we put it part of your intro. You know, I'll tweet it. You guys can put it as your banner. I truly believe it. So I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for the compliment. But so I do think that we have a chance at a bowl. So if we've been, I've been needing to really make the social push and eventually I will like just create the full video and make some cool graphics and stuff where you were making the hashtag bowl by boulder. So what that means is our schedule, the Cincinnati schedule is completely front loaded with a lot of winnable games. And I don't think, and obviously, you know, we're projected to finish 14th in the conference, 13th by Kelly Ford ratings. Well, I'm sorry, he might have us 12th, but it's bottom fourth of the league. So, you know, it's not, not the greatest, right? So I do think though that you have some winnable games in the first eight games. You've got Towson, Miami pit. Those three are your nine conference and Miami, Ohio is on the road. And I will say that losing that rivalry game last year, we had won 16 in a row previous to that, to losing it. So that was kind of a thorn in the side of UC fans and that was like the immediate red flag that, okay, this is not good. So eventually, you know, I think if you really, if you, after you have that bad taste of that loss in your mouth against the team that you would beat 16 times in a row previously, I have a feeling that UC will be, can win that game. It is a winnable game. Although Miami is a good team for the Mac, it's a winnable game and big 12 teams should be beating a Mac team. It doesn't matter where it is, you know, it's, that's just kind of my expectation. So if you win your non-conference, you've got your first five conference games against teams like Arizona State, you start off the conference with Houston, you go to UCF and Texas Tech, and then you get to Colorado for that eighth game. So I'm, I'm kind of thinking that you would probably drop those two road games there, two Texas Tech and UCF, Houston is not great and Arizona State is also in that same boat. So if you wanted to put yourself in a position to reach bowl eligibility by that eighth game against Dion Sanders and Colorado, you would probably need to win all of your home games and that Miami game. And if you win UCF, I know our fans want to beat UCF because it's been three, two straight years and it looks like it's a third because UCF does look to be better than Cincinnati this year. That would just, that, that would not go over very well with, with people in Bearcat Land. So the, because, and I only say bowl by boulder because I am really not optimistic about the November portion of the schedule because you've got West Virginia at home. You go to a farmer getting in back-to-back weeks with Iowa State and as you mentioned at the top, Kansas State and Manhattan on senior night and we have all the respect in the world for those three teams, especially after last year, what they're returning and just how much West Virginia at least made us look like a grease spot. And same with Iowa State and we didn't even play Kansas State last year, but probably the same thing would happen. So, and then you've got TCU to end the season. We'll see what they do. They're kind of a wild card to me, but I just don't want to really be like, if you want to make a bowl, I don't want to leave it until the last game of the season where TCU might be needing to make a bowl or if they're really good, they might need another win to make the conference championship game. I just don't want to leave that up to chance. So that's why I'm saying bowl by boulder because I think six of the eight first games on Cincinnati schedule are winnable. They are in the same neighborhood in different ratings that you look at, Kelly Ford or others. And I think that's just football, right? If you're within those neighborhoods, when you get on the field, it can be a true toss up. So, I think there is some sense of optimism, but I definitely understand the outside viewpoint of, well, they stunk last year, they might stink again. And I can't hold back against that. I just think that if you're really being specific, I still think we're better than Houston and Arizona State. I think those two are clearly the bottom to you for me, but I believe that since you have those two teams on your schedule, you can elevate yourself to four or five wins by that eighth game of the season. This episode is brought to you by Beyond Natural Pet Food. Beyond Pet Food helps me care for what matters, my pets and my world. They help me nourish my pets with high quality natural ingredients, like wild-caught salmon and organic free-range chicken. Beyond also has responsible sourcing practices and a long-term partnership with the Nature Conservancy. Beyond Pet Food, your pet, your world, learn more at beyondpetfood.com. Yeah, and it's both of them at home as well, so it should be interesting and look, momentum is a hell of a drug, especially in the game of football. So you get rolling in those first three games, which all of them are winnable, especially getting Pittsburgh at home. Hell, you guys beat Pittsburgh on the road last year, correct? So again, if you go three and oh, and all of a sudden, the vibes are high, Houston coming to town, and then who knows, Texas Tech might be on their seven-string quarterback by that point in the season too. It'll be an intriguing first month and a half for Cincinnati. I think all Big 12 fans should keep an eye pointed northeast for at least most of the conference. We'll ignore UCF in their geography. So where are you guys the most confident? Again, this is something where I watched last year. It was rough. I have my thoughts on where I'd be confident, but again, I'm bringing the experts on for a reason. You tell me where you're feeling the most confident, and that's what I will now change my answer to if it doesn't line up. So I'm interested to hear what you think, but to me, it is the running game. So last year, there were five games where UCF had 200 yards or more rushing, and they've got Corey Kiner returning as well as their entire starting line returning. Luke Kandra transferred from Louisville with Scott Satterfield, and he's been one of the highest rated right guards in all of college football, a top 100 player on EA College football and on PFF. So I definitely think that is the idea there. And you know, big 12s are running back league, it's a rough and tumble league. You're going to have to be able to run the ball. And I do feel confident that you can do that because where I would feel less confident is that we have a transfer quarterback who is a sophomore. And I don't think you want to give him too many long third downs where he has to connect with wide receivers and with defenses in the big 12 being what they are, you don't want to just put the ball up in the air too many times if you don't feel supremely confident in your quarterback. So I definitely think it's the offensive line. Just from that standpoint of returning production and the talent that is on the roster, I do feel that there are a couple guys there that can really be some difference makers and win a couple of those games. Yeah, that's where my head's at as well. And if you're from an outsider's perspective, if you're trying to manufacture, you know, bull by bolder, it's going to be on the back of, you know, ball control time of possession. And that's the way I would go about it. But I'm just a random guy with a secret day job and a podcast. So I mean, I don't know if it's good that I agree with that or not. Well, we'll get a little pessimistic again. Where are the most questions at for Cincinnati fans as we're by the time this is published, just barely a month out from kickoff? Yeah. So I think the questions are really with the defense. So last year, some might say it could not be worse than it was last year because you see did not have a great defense. They were one of the worst teams as well with their secondary in all of college football, not just in the big 12. So they did have a plan to bring back the defensive coordinator from last year, Brian Brown, but he left to be the code offensive coordinator at Ole Miss. So you see brought in Tyson bite from Iowa State to run the three, three, five. So I think the difference there is that you're running a, you're bringing in someone who's experienced with the big 12 and you're running a different system than you were last year, where, you know, obviously there are more defensive backs, but there's been more transfers in that area. Kai Stokes is a big one from Ohio State. He will probably come in and step up and play right away. And obviously we have, if he is able to play Dante Corleone, one, another one of our top 100 players on EA Sports College Football 25. He unfortunately did go down with blood clots about a month ago. So it's, it's, it's entirely possible that he does not play a down this year, but obviously health is most important, especially with blood clots. I'm, I'm not counting on him to be able to play this year. And that is a big loss for Cincinnati, but it's more important than football in that blood clot situation, obviously he's got to maintain his health first. So, but without Dante, I do think there is some death. They got Jared Bartlett, a in-conference transfer from West Virginia to play on the edge. And they have some experience back there and some younger guys that, that Cincinnati fans like and having Tyson bite, someone who's familiar with the league, playing his system. I do feel that again, the defense can be better than what it was last year because it really can't be much worse than being one of the bottom 10 defenses in the entire country. But that is definitely the concern there. And if the defense is just like paper thin, once again, that is, you could be staring down the face of another three and nine or four or any. All right, before we wrap things up, we're going to give a shout out to our friends at Manhattan Brewing Company. If any sense in how the fans are listening and you're making the trip to Manhattan, look, I like making fun of UCF fans just as much as you guys, but I went on, so on with Sons of UCF the week of the game, I talked up Manhattan Brewing Company and they rolled deep. They enjoyed themselves at Manhattan Brewing Company. So if you want to pull one over on the UCF fans, get every single Bearcat traveling to Manhattan, do yourself a favor and visit the best brewery in the state of Kansas, Manhattan Brewing Company. Look, they always have fun events going on the Friday before home football games are going to have all sorts of fun beer releases. And at that point in the year, they are going to have some of the best seasonal beers. They do a lot of fun Christmas beers. They're probably still going to have their pumpkin beer on tap, truly the best. It doesn't matter what your beer taste is, or if you like cocktails, or if you don't drink it all, they got non-alcoholic options for you as well. Manhattan Brewing Company is the spot for all my Kansas listeners. Talk to your local liquor store, get those four packs in your local store. They're distributed all throughout the state. Be polite, but be persistent. And then every time you go to Manhattan, get a couple of pints, get a couple of four packs, get a couple of crawlers to go. Like I said, Manhattan Brewing Company, the best brewery in the state of Kansas. All right, before we get to this, I was looking at your guys' schedule on Wikipedia, actually. And it denotes, of course, the Miami, Ohio game, the victory bell. One of the most played games in the history of college football, so truly a rivalry. And it notes West Virginia's a rivalry. They don't want to be rivals with anyone. They're weird like that. And then UCF as a rivalry as well. I know Miami of Ohio just pulled it up. They're on your schedule every year through 2029. So if you were going to power rank the teams that you, Steve, now are specifically consider rivals in college football. We'll keep it just college football. How would you power rank any school? It doesn't even have to be those three, your three personal rivals for Cincinnati or four or five, whoever, however many you want to power rank. You want to do a top five? Let's do a top five. I like the top five. So number five for me would probably be, it would probably be Ohio State. And just because we like to hate on them, we're in the same state. There's a lot of them. There's not as many of us as there are them. And we like to just needle and get one over where we can. Obviously 2021 was a great year for us, same with 2009 as well. Two great years where Cincinnati finished ahead of Ohio State in both of those years. So a great chance to needle those relentless Buckeye fans. Number four, I would probably put pit, to be honest. Pit has been a great rival for us in the past. Obviously a famous 2009 game for the Big East Championship. And that's just the reason why we got brought them back on the schedule for this. We have a trophy that pit does not acknowledge, but we still acknowledge. It's called the River City rivalry trophy. And it looks like, Scott, if you've ever seen like a steamboat, how they do the full steam ahead, it's just one of those. And the coach, coach Satterfield has it in his office. So it's a, it's a pretty cool trophy. I will say it's very heavy. It cannot really be transported, but it was nice to see it on the Monday after they beat pit to see it in the football office. They took a nice picture of it. So number three for me would probably be Louisville. And it's been reignited, not really because of the bowl game that Cincinnati and Louisville played after Satterfield was hired to lead UC from Louisville that did add some extra stakes, but bowl games only count when you want them to count. So, and you, you see lost that game, so it doesn't count for me. So is that the keg of nails trophy? Yes. Yes. One of the best trophies in all of college sports. And some, somebody in Louisville just had it in their garage and they finally dug it up for that game. So it was funny that, you know, the Louisville players, they got the Fenway bowl trophy, but no one cared about that bowl trophy. They all wanted to take a picture with the keg of nails. So I'm hoping that if Louisville does join in the big 12 in the future, you know, never know that that rivalry would be restored and that keg of nails would be back. I think that that trophy is great. It's a great, it's one of the best trophies in college sports to me, at least. Number two, I would definitely say Miami actually, I would, I would not have put them very highly in previous years, but once you lose to a team that you've beat pretty consistently as you guys may know with Kansas, if, you know, you know, losing to a team that you are used to beating just doesn't feel good. It's, it's not a very good feeling just in your stomach, you just think about it. Like, I, I have trouble even mentioning that game. We had a rule last year on the podcast about two weeks after that game that we were never allowed to talk about that game again. So, um, and they're not really a rival to UC in many other things. There's not really much crossover between the students of Cincinnati and Miami because Oxford is about an hour's drive away from the UC campus. So, sometimes there's a little bit of people going back and forth, but it's, it's a little bit of a weird rivalry we have been playing, but the alumni bases are very different. Miami usually does not care about sports either. So it's kind of been a one side of rivalry for the longest time, but then they finally beat us and now it's like, oh, I want to beat them again. Like it, it builds, it grows. So, um, that, and then to me, number one is UCF. And listen to any other fans in Bearcat land who say that they are not a rival because we are our number one rival for each other. I mean, they might hate USF more, but we play UCF more than USF does right now. So I think that is the best part about being in a conference with them is that every day we go back and forth, like it's just like constant needling back and forth and especially when the two programs were at their, their heights in 2022, 2021, there was constant needling back and forth, not as much last year, because obviously you see, we kind of knew we weren't very good. So it wasn't as fun to talk, talk trash when you're not very good, but that game was still very highly contested and very, like there was just a lot of trash talk leading up to that game, even though both teams were not very good, it did not have very good records at least going into that one. So for me, it's UCF. We have sparked up a friendship obviously with sons of UCF and a couple of their fans, but I don't know. There's a couple of people that we follow that they say is one wrong thing and it just like, oh, it just sticks on, it sticks in my brain. So I would definitely say UCF is the number one rival for UC football. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. We're driven by the search for better, but when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search, match with Indeed. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com/MBO terms and conditions apply. And that's the perfect way to transition into this and I always love figuring out from fans firsthand, okay, what games are they most excited for, what the hierarchy is, then from a case perspective, where does that game the Saturday before Thanksgiving rank in the hierarchy of excitement? Again, you have history, you have a lot of fun games on your schedule. So I'd imagine, especially as you're talking, that's going to be a dreadful November, I'd imagine it's not too high. But when you are kind of looking at the hierarchy of games, what games are you most excited for? Yeah, so I would definitely say that UCF game, like you mentioned, is going to be high. And I'll mention for the big 12 fans who may not know, one of UC's best players from the college football season, one of their highest rate of recruits transferred directly from UC to UCF in this past offseason, Deshawn Pace, who was our leading tackler for Cincinnati last year. And you know, I definitely, he's like a Cincinnati kid through and through, went to a local high school here, so you know, like it just, there was a, you know, just didn't work out with him and the coaching staff. And then he ended up at UCF. So that is, and there's two other players that transferred directly from Cincinnati to UCF this offseason. So there is just going to be a lot of storyline just going into that one in general. So I, and just the fact that the two teams don't like each other, the two fan bases don't like each other, that's, I definitely think that is a highly watchable game, even if both teams are, have a few losses on their record, that October 12th, we asked our Twitter following what their favorite game was on the schedule, or what was the one guaranteed game that you would want to have as a win. And most everybody said October 12th, they didn't even mention the name of the school we were playing against. They just said the date. So like, don't let anybody in UC land tell you that they're not rivals with UCF because there's a certain level of dislike there. So, and then I definitely am looking forward to playing some of the other teams that we have not played in the league so far, such as yourself in Kansas State, in going to Colorado, playing hosting Arizona State, a team we haven't really played ever in our history. And then hosting TCU at the end of the season, I think that's the, the only weird part about having a league with so many teams is that, and as us being new entrants, we still have not played a lot of these teams, and we'll still miss Arizona and Utah from our schedule this season. So, it'll be year three and we have not played all the teams in the league. So it'll be, it's just interesting though, to get to play those teams and then experience, like you said, experience different environments myself, Justin and I actually, both members of the podcast, we get to go up to BYU last year for the Cincinnati Friday night game and BYU, the fans are as hospitable as everybody says they are, they're incredibly nice. The nicest people we met, probably the only Mormons with that, oh, I'm sorry, they, they were not practicing members of the church, I will mention that, but they had an actual tailgate with, you know, alcohol. So they don't get them in trouble, yes, yeah, no, exactly, you know, they, yeah, so they're, they wouldn't really worry about it, they're, they left, you know, they're, they're fine, but, so I think that's a great part and we actually got to meet a guy last year who went to all 12 games for Cincinnati and I'm wondering if he's going to try and go to all 12 this year just because, you know, you get to go to Iowa State and Kansas State and Colorado for the first time as part of the big 12 and Texas Tech as well. So there's four new road trips on there as well for them. So I think that's the weirdly nice part about realignment is that it brings schools together who have not traditionally played each other in the past and I think that's a, it's exciting at least to see those two teams on the field when you usually wouldn't have in the past. All right, and then finally, if KSA fans are doing their own research, putting together their own summer projects and Cincinnati comes up on their, on their own personal schedule, what would you tell them to spend a little bit of extra time researching on deep diving on as they're going through their own research? Yeah, so I would just mention that, you know, I think a funny thing to me is that we have two brothers who are both punters. And one is, has his final year of eligibility this year and his, his younger brother is going to punt for us the next two years after that just transferred from Arkansas this past off season and Mason Fletcher is his name. He was one of our media day participants. So you know, we do take special teams seriously here, maybe not as much as, you know, Iowa, as our friends at Iowa State might mention, but I think that's interesting as well. I think the other part too is that there is an underrated part of the receiver court at Cincinnati. You've got guys like Xavier Henderson, who was a transfer from Florida and Barry Jackson, a young recruit who only played in a few games last year, but definitely showed some bursts when he was able to. I think if the quarterback really develops Brayden Soresby, if he really develops, they have a chance to be pretty dynamic on that offense and then close out games with that grounded pound running attack that we mentioned. So I almost forgot to mention Evan Pryor, who transferred from Ohio State and then Evan Prater, one of our top rated recruits at the quarterback position, changed his position to wide receiver in the last off season, just so he could be a part of the team and stay close to home. He's one of our wide receivers. So there, there's definitely not as much talent as say like a K state or a Utah, like that. I don't think nobody in Cincinnati land is expecting us to go out and win nine, ten games this year. That's just not the cards for us. And I'll be honest, like it's more likely that we don't make a bowl again this year than than not. But I would just mention, like I said earlier about the other teams that are in our neighborhood, you know, with the Houston, Arizona State, depending on what Texas Tech looks like by the time of their game, same with Colorado. There are some chances for Cincinnati to elevate above the preseason expectations and rankings. So we definitely recommend people look into that and then just see what else happens around the league and don't be surprised. But if, so I'll say this, if we're, if we're good, don't be surprised. But if we're bad, also don't be surprised because like I don't think, I think both things are very possible this year and good for me means you win six games and get back to a bowl game. Perfect. Well, I see a tail wagging behind you. So I think it's time we wrap things up. I got to take my own dog out as well. But before we do, Steve, where can folks find you working? They find the best Cincinnati fan podcast in the game. Yeah. So again, thank you so much for the compliment. Greatly appreciate it. We are @VivaLikatsPod on Twitter. Both of our handles, myself, I'm @_MowerPower and Justin is @justhiles_. You can find both of those in our bio. We're taking a little bit of a summer schedule right now. So releasing once every, you know, whenever, so, and then we are, we will start ramping up as fall camp starts ramping up as well. And then we will be, you know, hosting full to every week episodes. And then we'll do our post game spaces. We'd really like to get more big 12 fans involved in those post game spaces. So if you're a K-State fan who just happened to be watching the Cincinnati game and want to give your opinion, please feel free to come on in. We love, love chatting with people. We're love being a part of Big 12 Twitter. It's a great place to be and the memes and jokes are always flying. So always happen to be a part of just, you know, the conference and the, the talk around everything. So, but yeah, definitely check us out, VivaLikatsPod, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, if you'd like to see our smiling faces, we definitely, we're going to start putting out more content as the year gets closer and we're excited for you too, man. It can only be better than year one, hopefully. Definitely. Well, you know, I've been kind of dubbing this. The beginning of the end of the off season fall camp is, or pre-season camp is just around the corner. I can't wait. Steve, thank you again for popping on cat fans. If you're listening tomorrow, Iowa State wraps up the summer school series and guess what? Blitz month. We went through the 12 games. We've talked to folks who cover the other teams in the conference. We are going to ramp it up and we're going to be talking to just about everyone who covers or talks about K-State football. So Blitz month begins next week and it's go time, folks. It is go time. I can't wait. For Steve, for Viva LeCats, the best Cincinnati fan podcast there is, for his dog, for my dog, Chauncey, who's sitting patiently waiting to go outside. My name is Scott McFarland. We love you guys and go cats. Hail to the purple, hail to the white, wild cat in spear-reared, wild cat in spear-reared, wild cat in fight, hail alma mater from sea to sea, onward, forever, hail victory. You can stay wild cats for alma mater fights, glory in the combat for the purple and the white faithful to our colors. We will ever be a fighting, ever fighting for a wild cat, victory. Fight, fight, fight, fight, you can stay wild cats for alma mater fight, fight, fight, glory in the combat for the purple and the white faithful to our colors. We will ever be a fighting, ever fighting for a wild cat, victory. Go state! One, two, baratamala, baratamala, baratamala, baratamala, baratamala. You can stay wild cats for alma mater fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight [MUSIC]