(04-30-2013 01:57 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  This may be one reason Cincinnati doesn't get the credit it deserves

I think the biggest reason UC hasn't gotten as much respect as it is due is because of its BCS bowl games. Because Big East football tended to be viewed as a sub-par conference, I think the media and a lot of casual fans tend to put more emphasis on OOC game/bowl game results than regular season results. Losing by 13 to VTech in the 2009 Orange Bowl and by 27 to Florida in the 2010 Sugar Bowl didn't do much to elevate the image of the UC's program and I think those two losses stand out more than the Big East championships UC won.

Case in point is Louisville. I think a lot of people in the media perceive UofL to be a better football program than UC even though in reality, UC has been much better over the last 5 years. I think a big part of that is because UofL is 2-0 in its BCS games while UC is 0-2. Look how much pre-season hype UofL has gotten since beating Florida and how quickly people have forgotten the spanking from Cuse and the head-scratching loss to UConn.

(04-30-2013 01:57 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  the UC TV market is actually divided across several states. UC can't win its own state, but when you combine them all Bearcat Nation is pretty big.
(Still, there is that embarrassingly low home attendance)

#1. I think UC Track and Field coach Bill Schnier summed it up pretty well. “If you look at the prototype of the big-time college program in Division I, it usually is in a college town, set aside for that university, centered around that university. In most cases, they are the flagship school of the state. [UC is] in-between. We’re in a larger city. We have lots of competition. We don’t even have the whole attention of our whole community because there’s also Xavier. There’s also Miami. There’s also Ohio State. So when you look at our fan base, to an extent, we’re painted into a corner and the corner is divided by the state lines.” (link)

The big problem for UC is that it has tons of competition in its own market. Cincinnati is a pro-sports market and the Bengals and Reds are very popular. UK is hugely popular in northern Kentucky and Ohio State and Notre Dame both have a lot of fans on the Ohio side. Then you have in-city rival Xavier competing for attention during basketball.

#2. Don't conflate the size of a TV market with the size of a fan base. Just because a TV market is large does not mean that the fan base is big (case in point: Temple).