By Bill Koch
The two biggest wins in the history of the UC football program were the 30-11 win over No. 7 Rutgers on national television on Nov. 18, 2006, and the come-from-behind 45-44 win over No. 14 Pitt in the Big East championship game on Dec. 5, 2009.
But there’s another huge win that doesn’t get talked about nearly as much. That’s the Bearcats’ 17-12 upset of 9th-ranked Wisconsin on Sept. 18, 1999 before 27,721 fans at Nippert Stadium.
Consider this: Before the Bearcats knocked off the Badgers their all-time record against ranked opponents was 1-44. Their only other victory was a 14-3 win over No. 20 Penn State in 1983 under head coach Watson Brown.
The week before the Wisconsin game, UC had lost to Troy State, a Division I-AA team, at home. The Bearcats were whopping 26-point underdogs against the Badgers, who were led by bruising running back Ron Dayne, the winner of that year’s Heisman Trophy.
Rick Minter, now 66 and currently out of coaching, went 53-63 as UC’s head coach from 1994-2003. As he looks back on the upset of Wisconsin today, he does so with a mixture of pride and a sense of disbelief that the game played out almost exactly the way he envisioned.
“I’m a big believer in telling the kids early in the week and then reinforcing it on Friday night when your offense, defense and special teams are all sitting in the same room,” Minter said. “You tell them how you’re going to win the game. You want the offense to know how the defense is going to play. The defense needs to hear that we’re not going to move the ball a great deal against these guys.
“I looked at our punter (Adam Wulfeck) and said, ‘You better get your leg ready because you’re going to punt seven to nine times. Understand that this is going to be a slugfest and needs to be low-scoring if we’re going to pull it off.' That was probably the most prophetic game I’ve ever done when I told the guys, this is how it’s going to play out and here’s why we’re going to win.”
Wisconsin scored first on a 41-yard field goal with 1:26 left in the first quarter. UC responded with a 51-yard touchdown run early in the second quarter by running back Robert Cooper, who gained 1,245 yards that season. Against the Badgers, he gained 143 yards on 20 carries.
“I looked Robert Cooper in the eye on Friday night," Minter said, "and I said, ‘Coop, you have to break one run for us. We’re not going to score a lot. We might need an X play. We need a big one out of you,brother, ’ and he broke a 51-yarder that gave us a lead. He breaks that run, it puts us up, and they’re chasing us.”
Cooper had not played against Troy State the previous week because of the death of his aunt, which helps to explain how the Bearcats lost that game. It was also only the second game of the season, and Minter was trying to hide the new spread offense UC had been working on under first-year offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher because he didn’t want Wisconsin to see it on film.
Later in the second quarter, on second-and-goal from the UC 1-yard line, cornerback Ivan Fields stopped Dayne for a 1-yard loss. Wisconsin ended up kicking a 20-yard field goal to make 7-6, UC, at the half.
A 5-yard touchdown run by quarterback Deontey Kenner gave the Bearcats a 14-6 lead with just over nine minutes left in the third quarter. Dayne scored on an 18-yard run with 5:15 left, but a two-point conversion pass attempt was knocked down by UC’s Tinker Keck, allowing UC to keep the lead, now at 14-12.
The Badgers had two other major mishaps. An illegal block wiped out an 81-yard punt return for a touchdown by Wisconsin’s Nick Davis, and on the Badgers’ final drive, a would-be touchdown pass to Lee Evans was nullified by an illegal motion call.
In the final five minutes, Keck tried to field a punt inside the UC 10, only to have the ball bounce off his facemask and onto the turf. Wisconsin’s Ryan Marks scooped up the ball and ran it into the end zone, but the touchdown he thought he had scored was disallowed because a muffed punt can’t be advanced.
Two plays later, Dayne carried from the 10 to the UC 2, but the Bearcats’ Bobby Fuller punched the ball loose and his teammate Jeff Burrow recovered in the end zone. Unable to move the ball, UC was forced to punt. When Davis was hit by UC’s LaVar Glover, he fumbled the punt, which was recovered by UC’s Carlton Sykes, setting up freshman kicker Jonathan Ruffin for a 41-yard field goal with 5:01 left to give UC a 17-12 lead.
Dayne tweaked an ankle in the first half, but still finished with 231 yards on 28 carries to move past Ohio State’s Archie Griffin as the all-time leading rusher in the Big Ten.
“Before the game, I said, ‘Fellas, Dayne, is going to get his yards,’” Minter said. “I didn’t know he was going to get 231, but he’s going to get his yards. What we’ve got to do is play a little bit of bend-but-don’t-break on defense, let them move the ball between the 20s. We’ve got to bow our necks near the goal line and we’ve got to win the turnover battle.
“That’s kind of how that game played out. They moved the ball between the 20s. Ron got his 230-some yards, but he put the ball on the ground going in one time when Bobby Fuller pulled it out, so we staved off that touchdown. It was nip and tuck all the way. It was only a couple of mistakes they made. They call them mistakes. We call them forced errors.”
The following week the Bearcats lost to No. 12 Ohio State, 34-20. They finished 3-8 and went 0-6 in Conference USA. But they produced one of the top three wins in UC football history – and certainly the most unlikely.
“It’s not as big today because Cincinnati has grown,” Minter said, “but when you beat a 9th-ranked team when you’re in Conference USA, it goes down as probably the biggest victory at that particular moment in the program.”
The two biggest wins in the history of the UC football program were the 30-11 win over No. 7 Rutgers on national television on Nov. 18, 2006, and the come-from-behind 45-44 win over No. 14 Pitt in the Big East championship game on Dec. 5, 2009.
But there’s another huge win that doesn’t get talked about nearly as much. That’s the Bearcats’ 17-12 upset of 9th-ranked Wisconsin on Sept. 18, 1999 before 27,721 fans at Nippert Stadium.
Consider this: Before the Bearcats knocked off the Badgers their all-time record against ranked opponents was 1-44. Their only other victory was a 14-3 win over No. 20 Penn State in 1983 under head coach Watson Brown.
The week before the Wisconsin game, UC had lost to Troy State, a Division I-AA team, at home. The Bearcats were whopping 26-point underdogs against the Badgers, who were led by bruising running back Ron Dayne, the winner of that year’s Heisman Trophy.
Rick Minter, now 66 and currently out of coaching, went 53-63 as UC’s head coach from 1994-2003. As he looks back on the upset of Wisconsin today, he does so with a mixture of pride and a sense of disbelief that the game played out almost exactly the way he envisioned.
“I’m a big believer in telling the kids early in the week and then reinforcing it on Friday night when your offense, defense and special teams are all sitting in the same room,” Minter said. “You tell them how you’re going to win the game. You want the offense to know how the defense is going to play. The defense needs to hear that we’re not going to move the ball a great deal against these guys.
“I looked at our punter (Adam Wulfeck) and said, ‘You better get your leg ready because you’re going to punt seven to nine times. Understand that this is going to be a slugfest and needs to be low-scoring if we’re going to pull it off.' That was probably the most prophetic game I’ve ever done when I told the guys, this is how it’s going to play out and here’s why we’re going to win.”
Wisconsin scored first on a 41-yard field goal with 1:26 left in the first quarter. UC responded with a 51-yard touchdown run early in the second quarter by running back Robert Cooper, who gained 1,245 yards that season. Against the Badgers, he gained 143 yards on 20 carries.
“I looked Robert Cooper in the eye on Friday night," Minter said, "and I said, ‘Coop, you have to break one run for us. We’re not going to score a lot. We might need an X play. We need a big one out of you,brother, ’ and he broke a 51-yarder that gave us a lead. He breaks that run, it puts us up, and they’re chasing us.”
Cooper had not played against Troy State the previous week because of the death of his aunt, which helps to explain how the Bearcats lost that game. It was also only the second game of the season, and Minter was trying to hide the new spread offense UC had been working on under first-year offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher because he didn’t want Wisconsin to see it on film.
Later in the second quarter, on second-and-goal from the UC 1-yard line, cornerback Ivan Fields stopped Dayne for a 1-yard loss. Wisconsin ended up kicking a 20-yard field goal to make 7-6, UC, at the half.
A 5-yard touchdown run by quarterback Deontey Kenner gave the Bearcats a 14-6 lead with just over nine minutes left in the third quarter. Dayne scored on an 18-yard run with 5:15 left, but a two-point conversion pass attempt was knocked down by UC’s Tinker Keck, allowing UC to keep the lead, now at 14-12.
The Badgers had two other major mishaps. An illegal block wiped out an 81-yard punt return for a touchdown by Wisconsin’s Nick Davis, and on the Badgers’ final drive, a would-be touchdown pass to Lee Evans was nullified by an illegal motion call.
In the final five minutes, Keck tried to field a punt inside the UC 10, only to have the ball bounce off his facemask and onto the turf. Wisconsin’s Ryan Marks scooped up the ball and ran it into the end zone, but the touchdown he thought he had scored was disallowed because a muffed punt can’t be advanced.
Two plays later, Dayne carried from the 10 to the UC 2, but the Bearcats’ Bobby Fuller punched the ball loose and his teammate Jeff Burrow recovered in the end zone. Unable to move the ball, UC was forced to punt. When Davis was hit by UC’s LaVar Glover, he fumbled the punt, which was recovered by UC’s Carlton Sykes, setting up freshman kicker Jonathan Ruffin for a 41-yard field goal with 5:01 left to give UC a 17-12 lead.
Dayne tweaked an ankle in the first half, but still finished with 231 yards on 28 carries to move past Ohio State’s Archie Griffin as the all-time leading rusher in the Big Ten.
“Before the game, I said, ‘Fellas, Dayne, is going to get his yards,’” Minter said. “I didn’t know he was going to get 231, but he’s going to get his yards. What we’ve got to do is play a little bit of bend-but-don’t-break on defense, let them move the ball between the 20s. We’ve got to bow our necks near the goal line and we’ve got to win the turnover battle.
“That’s kind of how that game played out. They moved the ball between the 20s. Ron got his 230-some yards, but he put the ball on the ground going in one time when Bobby Fuller pulled it out, so we staved off that touchdown. It was nip and tuck all the way. It was only a couple of mistakes they made. They call them mistakes. We call them forced errors.”
The following week the Bearcats lost to No. 12 Ohio State, 34-20. They finished 3-8 and went 0-6 in Conference USA. But they produced one of the top three wins in UC football history – and certainly the most unlikely.
“It’s not as big today because Cincinnati has grown,” Minter said, “but when you beat a 9th-ranked team when you’re in Conference USA, it goes down as probably the biggest victory at that particular moment in the program.”
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