ESPN Big East Blog

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

CINCINNATI -- Brian Kelly began his sales pitch the minute he became Cincinnati's coach in December 2006.

He told his new players they would compete for the Big East championship and become a Top 25-caliber program right away.

	Jim Rinaldi/Icon SMI
	Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly has the Bearcats thinking big.

His optimism met some understandable skepticism. The Bearcats had just finished a 7-5 regular season, a banner year by their recent standards, and were happy to get invited to the International Bowl.

"We had a lot of seniors on the team, and it was kind of like, 'Who's this guy coming in and saying all this big talk?'" senior defensive end Connor Barwin recalled.

Kelly led Cincinnati to a bowl victory, then continued his ambitious proselytizing all summer. When Cincinnati knocked off Oregon State by 31 points in Week 2 last season, the new coach had found true believers.

"That's when we started to think, 'OK, this guy knows what he's talking about and his philosophy works,'" Barwin said. "That allowed us to get the confidence he had been talking about since he walked through the door."

The Bearcats finished 10-3 in Kelly's first season, the most victories by the program since 1951. They landed their first-ever spot in the final Associated Press poll, at No. 17.

Now, the sales pitch aims even higher. Kelly will take his team on the road against No. 4 Oklahoma this Saturday, and he sounds positively giddy about the opportunity.

"We took this game on as an opportunity to measure ourselves against the very best," he said. "When I came here, my first goal was to get our football team to change its mindset as far as how they compete, what they compete for. This is the next progression. We know we can compete for a championship in the Big East. Now we want to find out where we stand on a national stage."

Kelly went looking for a prominent 2008 opponent even before the 2007 season kicked off. (Oklahoma will return the favor in Cincinnati's Paul Brown Stadium in 2010).

He could hardly have found a tougher measuring stick. The Sooners are 50-2 at home since 2000 and have been installed as a 21.5-point favorite Saturday. The game will be played before 82,000 Boomer Sooner faithful, nearly two-and-half times as many fans as Cincinnati sees at its own home stadium.

But the Bearcats shouldn't be too intimidated by the atmosphere. They have a veteran team -- 18 juniors and seniors fill the starting lineup -- and many of the upperclassmen remember the 2005 trip to Penn State and the 2006 visit to Ohio State.

Of course, both of those games ended in blowout losses. The difference this time around? Cincinnati players believe.

"When we went to Ohio State, I don't want to say we didn't think we could win," Barwin said. "But it was kind of like, 'Hey, if we get a couple of breaks and play our best, maybe we'll come out with a big upset.'

"But this year, everybody's excited. We know how talented we are and we're confident in our ability. We think we can go down (to Oklahoma) and come out with a win."

Part of that confidence stems from Kelly's offensive brilliance. From Grand Valley State, where he won back-to-back Division II national championships, to Central Michigan, Kelly's teams have always scored points in bunches. Cincinnati has averaged 35.9 points in his 15-game tenure, eclipsing 40 points six times.

"We feel like we can score on anybody," receiver Dominick Goodman said.

Facing the spread won't be anything new for Oklahoma, which had mixed results against the scheme last season. The Sooners' two victories over Missouri -- 41-31 in the regular season and 38-17 in the Big 12 title game -- had some analysts decreeing that Bob Stoops had found the key to stopping the spread with his speed on defense. But Oklahoma also lost to Texas Tech and Colorado, both of which employ different types of spread principles.

"I think at Missouri they'd probably say, 'We played well offensively, but we didn't hold them down,'" Kelly said. "Those were shootouts. And our systems are a little bit different."

And there was one other game on the Sooners' schedule last year that caught Cincinnati's attention. Fellow Big East member West Virginia rolled over Oklahoma 48-28 in the Fiesta Bowl. The Bearcats only lost 28-23 to the Mountaineers in November.

"That showed us their weaknesses," Goodman said. "Hopefully, we can go out there and do the same thing West Virginia did."

But Kelly doesn't see many weaknesses to exploit on the Sooners, who boast one of the nation's most experienced (and talented) offensive lines, a star backfield with quarterback Sam Bradford and tailback DeMarco Murray and NFL prospects all over the defense. Kelly described Oklahoma as "a Big East all-star team."

Cincinnati has some studs of its own, especially on its underrated defense. Mike Mickens and DeAngelo Smith are two of the best defensive backs in the country who combined for 14 interceptions a year ago. Defensive tackle Terrill Byrd, back after a one-game suspension, was a second-team all-American last year.

The Big East sure could use a respectable effort by the Bearcats after its teams went 0-4 against major-college competition in the first weekend.

"If Cincinnati went out there and got a win," said Connecticut coach Randy Edsall, "it would do a lot for Cincinnati and do a lot for our conference."

Kelly is a restless promoter of his program and a master of the perfect sound bite. He publicly complained last year when his hometown paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, didn't bother to send a reporter to Big East Media Day. Instead of feuding with the paper, though, he began writing a preseason diary in its pages.

He's convinced just about everybody that Cincinnati can field a winner. But the next level of credibility can only be purchased by winning games like this.

"(A win) would kind of give us that national attention, the national respect," Barwin said. "You don't get respect after one year. You've got to do it consistently."