Obviously, you guys do not live in Cincinnati. I am a lifelong bobcat BUT...

Over the last 10 years or so the academic quality of UC has improved tremendously and the pride in the institution has grown much like ours. In fact, the latest USNews rankings has the UC Academic rank tied with OHIO (#129 , I think). They used to be 50 slots below us. Maybe that says us much about us slipping as them improving?

Second, not that long ago, the two football programs were pretty much on equal footing. They used to draw 17-20,000 like us. Now, most UC crowds are 30-35,000+. They used to recruit like us. Now, they get 10-15 3-star recruits a year. Finally UC has made a committment to play football in a P5 conference. That may or may not happen but they have committed the resources that puts them a lot closer to that dream than OHIO seemingly ever will be.

sorry guys...

The article said that their data was based on "likes", so I suspect that one person could be counted for multiple teams. So if a person in Cincinnati says "Oh, I like the Bearcats, I'll like that page...oh I root for the Buckeyes, I'll like that page...oh, I went to a game at lexington once, that was fun, I'll like that page...oh, and I'm catholic, so go Notre Dame!" then they'd count for each of those teams.

Del, that Nasty Nati stuff has pretty much disappeared-at least in Cincinnati. I had not heard that talk for years until reading this post!

And, Country, I would never trade my OHIO experience for UC! UC is way to commuter oriented although it is trying to change with the developments going up around campus now.

I would just say in general starting with the billion dollar capital campaign to improve facilities and the current emphasis on Academics this place has come a long way from the 1970s.

If you worked at UC and had to go thru the traffic I go thru in the Clifton area...you'd say it is predominantly a commuter school:)

I think Xavier did a good job several years ago in "campifing" (don't try to look that one up in the dictionary) their buildings and grounds. There are now areas of the campus that feel like a college campus. That wasn't always the case. UC will have a harder time doing this, I think.

Cincinnati has everything in place to join a power conference for the time being. They built up the program playing in a BCS conference where they had a recruiting advantage over mid major schools. They built up a nice budget using profits from the Big East. The Big East is dead. Cincinnati is now a G5 school. In 2010 it was a G5 with 54 schools to recruit against. This year its a G5 with 63 schools to compete with. Any G5 school is capable in theory of having the Top program in the 6th rated football conference. UC had advantages for a long time over MAC schools with TV and bowl games but the MAC has all of that now. The real difference maker is going to be what the game atmosphere is like and Ohio has one of the better G5 game atmospheres around. The UC strategy is focused around a short term push into a P5 conference but if it takes more than 5 years when the exit fees from departed Big East schools run out they'll be feeling a financial pinch. Performance drops off and they'll fire Tuberville and his 3.2 million dollar salary (26th in the country) replaced with a guy making 1 million. SMU tried the same thing with June Jones who they overpaid for in an attempt to move to a better conference and now he's out. UC is due for a correction.