Storybook Season Unfolding in Cincinnati

CINCINNATI -- Go ahead. Combine Florida, Alabama, Texas and TCU, the only four teams ahead of Cincinnati in the BCS standings. Now throw in the rest of the programs throughout college football, and it still won't matter.

You won't find a collection of teams -- let alone one individually -- with more riveting stories than those surrounding Cincinnati. Come to think of it, the 2009 Bearcats have the best set of storylines of all-time for a season. Despite a wretched existence during their 123 years of playing football at a place more noted for the guy who designed the Golden Gate Bridge and Oscar Robertson, the Bearcats are in the national championship discussion with a 10-0 record out of nowhere.

That's the best of those stories.

"My grandpa and my aunt and my uncle had season tickets to different Cincinnati games when I was growing up here in town, and they always had an extra ticket, so I was able to tag along," said Tony Pike, now the Bearcats' starting quarterback. "At that time, it was more of a basketball school, so we came to a lot of basketball games. But I remember coming to football games, and they were almost giving away tickets. They never packed the stadium, and you always could sit anywhere you wanted."

No more, not with 35,000-seat Nippert Stadium stuffed, loud and colorful these days whenever the Bearcats take its 107-year-old field.

Yep, that's the best story, but only if you're not talking about Pike and the rest of Cincinnati 's quarterbacks. Pike is a likely All-America candidate, and he was deep into the Heisman Trophy talk until he missed time recently with an arm injury. Just so you know, Pike was fifth on the depth chart last year. And his replacement, Zach Collaros (pictured), managed a crazy passing efficiency rating of 195.53 by throwing for 1,434 yards and 10 touchdowns in four games this season. And Chazz Anderson, the Bearcats' third-string quarterback, is 2-0 overall as a starter.

Maybe that isn't the best story, because the quarterbacks story isn't even Pike's favorite story. "It's the Mardy Gilyard story," said Pike, referring to Gilyard, the wide receiver who ranks as a primary reason for an explosive offense that scores moments after the ball moves from the center to the quarterback's hands.

Anyway, Gilyard spent several months among Cincinnati 's homeless -- literally. He lost his scholarship after he skipped classes as a freshman, and he became academically ineligible to play. So, while working four jobs to get back into school, he often slept with an empty stomach around parts of campus in his 2000 Pontiac Grand Am. Oh, and this week, Gilyard was named one of the 15 finalists for the Walter Camp Football Foundation Player of the Year Award.

Said Pike, "That just lets you know the love that Mardy has for the game, and as a quarterback, you love to see that. You know he's a guy that you can count on all the time, just by what he has gone through. He is an inspiration."

So is the kid. The one with the brain tumor.

That's the best story. It involves 12-year-old Mitch Stone, a sixth-grader from Cincinnati, who was adopted by the Bearcats this summer. When he isn't weak from chemotherapy, he is sending Bible verses to the Cincinnati players, and they write those verses on their arms during games while wearing a wristband in his honor. For his birthday this fall, they bought Mitch an electric guitar and a cellphone that they call the Bearcat Hotline to give all parties direct access to each other.

Actually, the best story is the practice field: the Bearcats don't have one. More shockingly, they are the only Division 1-A school not named Marshall without one, but they still lead the Big East along the way to more impressive things.

No, the best story is Cincinnati's ability to rank 15th nationally in points allowed despite losing 10 starters from last year's defense. Seven of those starters landed on NFL rosters, and get this: six of the players who have helped the Bearcats recover from those defensive losses were recruited as offensive players.

I'm sorry, but the best story is Brain Kelly, 47, who is a local rock star despite finishing just his third season as Cincinnati head coach. You can attribute his popularity to his Irish Catholic charisma and his ability to perform a football miracle. Of his 36 predecessors, 20 finished their Bearcat careers with losing records. His first Cincinnati team went 10-3, and then came last year's 11-3 record after a trip to the Orange Bowl. As a result, Kelly is rumored to be headed to bigger and bolder football pastures, including the historically green, blue and gold one around Notre Dame.

That said, none of those stories is the best.

Well, not according to Kelly.

After Kelly leaned closer on Thursday night to his FanHouse guest at the Montgomery Inn, Cincinnati's noted rib restaurant that features his weekly radio show, he mentioned that ancient Nippert Stadium has only one luxury box.

"Earlier this year, when we had our second consecutive sellout, which was the first time in the history of the school that had ever happened, we had everybody in that one luxury box, and my brother was up there," Kelly said. "He went to the bathroom, and when he got in there, he ran into this older gentleman who turned to my brother, and he didn't know who he was, and the guy goes, 'Boy. I liked it when we weren't winning. I didn't have to wait so long in line to go to the bathroom.' "

Kelly laughed. I laughed. Then Kelly laughed some more, before saying, "That was funny to me, because we have taken so much time to build this program, and somebody's upset because they can't go to the bathroom in a timely fashion."

This guy gets it, by the way. According to the Cincinnati sports information department, Kelly has spent the last two years traveling to at least 180 speaking engagements throughout southwestern Ohio. Any gathering of 40 or more folks is eligible for a Kelly appearance. His mission is twofold: to sell what once was a nothing brand of Bearcats football, and to continue his recruiting emphasis on the rich talent throughout the state of Ohio in general and this region in particular.

If you didn't know any better, you'd say Kelly is telling Notre Dame and everybody else that he plans to become Cincinnati 's Knute Rockne.

"This is a high-limits poker table. This is where you're at a BCS level now, and I knew they (those associated with Cincinnati football) didn't know what it looked like," said Kelly, who began the Bearcats' transformation by developing what he calls "the complete player." The process continues, and it starts with an emphasis by this former Division II head coach for 13 seasons on everything but football -- the intellectual, the social, the spiritual and the physical.

Said Pike, "He wants to know more about your life and to meet your family than about football, and that goes a long ways. It's also other things. It's the little things like treating women with respect. Not to lie or to cheat or to steal. Things that will help you away from football and long after your career is over."

Added Kelly, "There's such a passion for football here (in Cincinnati), whether it be high school football on Friday nights, the colleges on Saturday or the Bengals. We've won 16 consecutive regular-season games, so I think we're building that consistency around the University of Cincinnati. And then, I think, when you set that standard of expectation, it helps perpetuate the longevity, because they only know one way to come to work every day, and that is to keep this thing going."

This isn't to say everything is just dandy for the Bearcats. In order to keep from spending Christmas and beyond in a Cincinnati jail, backup quarterback Collaros must complete an alcohol education class. He was accused of trying to use a fake ID earlier this year to get into a bar near campus. He has until December 7 to complete the class or face 180 days behind the slammer.

The judge was peeved, because he gave Collaros this same option earlier in the year, but Collaros didn't take advantage of the judge's break back then.

That's another story.

Not as good as the other ones, though.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning," an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta.