ESPN Big East Blog

Posted by ESPN.com's Brian Bennett

CINCINNATI -- As his team finished its 30-10 win over Syracuse on Saturday, Cincinnati receiver Mardy Gilyard lay on his back on the Nippert Stadium turf. He held an orange in each hand and balanced another fruit on his chest.

"I was just taking everything in and playing the last four years over in my mind," Gilyard said. "We've done been through the struggle together, and now we're here at the peak of everything. We went from being the worst team in the Big East to the best in just three years."

Scenes that unfolded at Saturday's game would have been unfathomable at this place just a few short years ago.

There was Big East senior associate commissioner John Marinatto handing the Bearcats the league trophy, and defensive end Connor Barwin attempting to carry it over his head through a sea of fans on the field. There were Orange Bowl representatives in their blazers signing autographs during the fourth quarter. There was even a message on the scoreboard at one point that declared the Bearcats as "Ohio's only BCS team."

When the Big East added Cincinnati in 2005 after the ACC raid of Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech, league officials did so mostly based on the Bearcats' proud basketball tradition. The school had never accomplished much in football, played in the conference's smallest stadium and was an afterthought in a city with two pro sports teams.

Now the Bearcats are heading to a BCS game, likely the Orange Bowl, and can finish the regular season 11-2 by beating Hawaii next week.

"Never again will we have to say that if you can do it in Piscataway, New Jersey, or if you can do it in Morgantown, West Virginia, that you can sure as heck can do it in Cincinnati," head coach Brian Kelly said. "Because we've done it."

Kelly improved to 21-5 since he took over the program from former coach Mark Dantonio in December 2006. Dantonio deserves a lot of credit for beginning this rise and assembling the current class of 19 seniors, 14 of whom started Saturday's game. Those seniors remember that first year in the Big East, when the Bearcats went 4-7 and lost by 28 points to Miami of Ohio, 38 to West Virginia and 35 to Rutgers.

The next year, after the team scratched out a 7-5 campaign, Dantonio left for Michigan State before the bowl game. The school then hired Kelly from Central Michigan, and on his first day on the job he told the players they were going to win a Big East title.

"I was like, 'Get this guy out of here,'" Gilyard said. "I didn't even know where he came from. Who is Central Michigan, anyway?

"As a team, we felt we kind of got lied to in a sense by the old coaching staff. It was like we built a three-foot wall around us, and we were not letting any coaches get that close to us any more. But coach Kelly finds his way to get to you."

Besides convincing his players they could win big, Kelly had to crack another fortress: An apathetic city. He famously called out the Cincinnati Enquirer for not attending Big East media day in the summer of 2006, and he went all around the area giving talks and selling fans on his vision for the program.

None of it would have mattered without winning games, and even Kelly admits he wasn't sure he could get the team to this point so quickly.

"If I thought we were going to win a Big East title this year, I wouldn't have scheduled the Hawaii game," he said. "Our plan was definitely a three-year plan, and we knew we had to be on the cusp of it this year."

Kelly couldn't possibly have planned for what happened this year. Last season's starting quarterback, Ben Mauk, lost his appeal to the NCAA for an extra year of eligibility. Then season-opening starter Dustin Grutza broke his leg, and replacement Tony Pike broke his arm, followed by freshman Chazz Anderson spraining his knee. Pike re-injured his arm at Connecticut, and Anderson limped through the second half of a 40-16 loss. The Big East title seemed miles away at that point.

But then Pike came back with a cast on his left arm and blossomed into the most efficient passer in the Big East -- he went 28 of 44 for 272 yards and two touchdowns Saturday against Syracuse. The Bearcats haven't lost since that UConn disaster, toppling rivals West Virginia, Louisville and Pittsburgh for the first time ever in league play.

The defense, which features 10 starting seniors, kept the team afloat during all the quarterback injuries and has developed into a fearsome unit in the past five weeks. Kelly has done a masterful job of retaining Dantonio's old hard-nosed defensive philosophies while weaving in an explosive spread offense.

"Coach Dantonio was tough, tough, tough," Gilyard said. "Now it's like, we're finesse, but still tough. We can hit you with a hook as opposed to a haymaker. We can catch you with a couple of jabs here and there and wear you down with our finesse, yet we're still strong."

Interest in Cincinnati football is at an all-time high. The school literally couldn't give away football tickets for many years, and so until last season it forced those who wanted season basketball tickets to buy seats to football games, too. That and some bad teams led to a lot of empty bleachers.

Six of the top eight Nippert Stadium crowds of all time have come in the past two years, including Saturday's near-capacity house of 34,603. That brought this season's average attendance figure to more than 31,900, the highest in school history.

Sure, many big-time programs get more than that for their spring game, but it's a start. And Kelly is working with school officials to figure out ways to expand Nippert without damaging its unique, center-of-campus setting.

"I was here when we were in Conference USA, and we were happy to have 19,000 (fans)," senior cornerback DeAngelo Smith said. "It's exciting to see everybody come around and support the UC program now. Hopefully there will be more to come."

The growing fan base will need to show its support at the BCS game to prove it's worthy of that stage. The Orange Bowl, which likely will pit the Bearcats against the ACC champion, requires participating teams to purchase about 16,000 tickets.

"This city has seemed to embrace the team, and that's important," said Jack Seiler, chairman of the Orange Bowl football committee. "This is such a football community -- it's been one of the top high school football areas for years -- and it's anxious to support a winner. And this program is a winner."

The word "winner" and Cincinnati football haven't been linked all that often. The Bearcats still seem shaky at celebrating; their fans prematurely rushed the field last week against Pittsburgh, and Gilyard and teammates accidentally nailed Kelly in the head with a Gatorade cooler while attempting to give him a victory shower Saturday.

The program now owns its first outright conference title since a 1964 Missouri Valley Conference crown. As linebacker Corey Smith raised the trophy toward the fans in the south end zone, he did so next to banners commemorating trips to the 2007 PapaJohns.com Bowl and the 2004 Fort Worth Bowl.

There's plenty of room left to hang that BCS game proclamation. Few programs have come as far as Cincinnati has to earn one.

"Guys who go to Ohio State or wherever are supposed to go to BCS games and are used to playing sold-out stadiums," Barwin said. "For us, we had to work for it, and we did the work to get it done. I think that makes it so much sweeter."