By Bill Koch
For someone who covered UC football back in the days when Dave Currey was the head coach, it’s still a little hard to get used to seeing the Bearcats ranked eighth in the country as they prepare to play next week at Notre Dame, a team they’ll probably be favored to beat.
I remember when there was very little interest in UC football, either from fans or the media. If you covered the Bearcats for either of the two daily papers, it was basically something to keep you occupied until basketball practice started in the middle of October.
That changed for a few years when Brian Kelly was here and the Bearcats were in the Big East. But then he left for Notre Dame and the Big East collapsed, sending UC back to mediocrity.
This resurgence has a different feel to it. Luke Fickell doesn’t appear as eager to leave as Kelly was and has been able to land more the area’s top local high school players than any of his predecessors. Nippert Stadium has been renovated and expanded to seat 40,000. And the Bearcats were recently welcomed into the Big 12 Conference.
Here’s how far the program has come:
In the fall of 1987, Currey was conducting his weekly press conference in his office. It was an intimate gathering consisting of only three people – the Enquirer’s Tom Groeschen; Joe Minster, an old-school scribe from the Hamilton (Ohio) Journal News who always wore a coat and tie to work; and me, the beat reporter for the afternoon Cincinnati Post.
As Currey talked about that week’s opponent. Joe’s chin dropped to his chest and he began to snore ever so lightly. Maybe Joe hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, or maybe he was bored to death, but it was delightfully funny in a cynical sportswriter sort of way. Tom and I looked at each other, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh and hoping for Joe’s sake that Currey wouldn’t notice him snoring a few feet in front of his desk.
But of course Currey did notice. How could he not? To his credit, he didn’t go off on poor old Joe as most football coaches would have. He just smiled and said, “I guess this topic doesn’t really interest Joe.” With that, Joe woke up, embarrassed to learn that he had dozed off. I didn’t know whom to feel worse for, Currey or Minster.
Such was the state of the Cincinnati football program in the late 1980s. That season, my first covering UC football, the Bearcats went 4-7. They lost at No. 20 Penn State, 41-0; to No. 3 Miami (Fla.), 48-10 at Riverfront Stadium in downtown Cincinnati; at West Virginia, 45-17; and at East Carolina, 56-28. It was the fifth of what became nine straight losing seasons for the Bearcats, five of them under Currey, who never posted a winning season at UC. In 1988, Currey’s last season at UC, the Bearcats averaged only 12,254 fans per game.
Currey was a kindly middle-aged gentleman who faced overwhelming odds trying to produce a winning football program at a school with antiquated facilities and little fan support. He didn’t fit the stereotype of a college football coach. He was short of stature with a round face and a monotone voice. He was so soft-spoken it was hard to imagine him ever yelling at his players during practice. He often spoke in allegories and even apologized occasionally after he answered a reporter’s question with what he considered a schmaltzy answer.
During the Currey era, from 1984 to 1988, UC had no conference affiliation in football. The administration was committed to fielding a big-time college football program, but there was very little chance of that happening given the constraints – financial and otherwise – under which Currey operated. To maintain the guise of a major program, it scheduled games, mostly on the road, against such powerhouse programs as Alabama, Penn State and Miami (Fla.). Those games almost always resulted in a lopsided loss for the Bearcats and a sizeable check for the athletic department.
In five seasons as UC’s head coach, Currey went 19-36. The Bearcats’ finest moment under Currey might have occurred in 1986 when they nearly upset fifth-ranked Penn State at Beaver Stadium in University Park, Pa. The underdog Bearcats took the lead, 17-14, with 13:22 left in the fourth quarter. While trying to run out the clock with about six minutes left, running back Reggie Taylor was stopped on a fourth-and-one running play. After UC punted, the NIttany Lions drove 75 yards for the game-winning touchdown with 3:07 remaining, and added a safety in the closing seconds to post a 23-17 win. Penn State went on to win the national championship that season.
In my mind, the lowest point, occurred on November 6, 1987 against Division I-AA Indiana State, which had a 3-6 record. Only 5,424 fans showed up in the 56,127-seat Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis to watch the Bearcats get blown out 40-16.
Because I worked for the afternoon Post, which had no Sunday edition, I was always looking for a different angle to write for my Monday story. I called Joe Steger, the UC president, and Carl Meyer, the athletic director, to ask them about the future of the program at a time when some fans and faculty were beginning to wonder if UC was fighting a losing battle trying to field a winning major college football program on the Division I-A level and should either abolish football or downgrade to Division I-AA.
In those days, it was relatively easy to reach the UC president. Steger had freely given me his home number and never discouraged me from calling if I needed something. I found out in subsequent years how unusual that was.
“You don’t judge a rebuilding on one game,” Steger said. ”It’s like any battle in the course of a long-range war. You have games you win and you have games you lose. In terms of the talent Dave is attracting, it still bodes well for the future.”
“One game, one season doesn’t make it,” Meyer said. “You’ve got to evaluate things over a much longer haul than that.”
But of course it wasn’t just one game or one season. The Bearcats hadn’t had a winning season since 1982 when they went 6-5 under Mike Gottfried. At that point, after four years under Currey, they were 15-27. But his bosses still believed in him.
“Dave’s a super guy,” Steger said. “He’s done a great job. Remember, he’s inherited a lot of problems.”
“I think it’s a very trying time for him,” Meyer said. “There’s so much involved. I was looking back at the past eight years and there were I-AA losses in there to Youngstown State and some others. You just have to assess all sorts of things and look at it from there. Dave has made significant improvements since he’s been here. Unfortunately, sometimes the plateau of success isn’t always the plane. There’s peaks and valleys and this was one of those valleys.”
After the game Currey acknowledged that it would be hard to bounce back from such a devastating defeat. He promised to start looking at some of his younger players with an eye toward next season.
“Football’s not much fun right now,” he said.
Currey was a good man. Around UC, if you asked the athletics staff what gave them hope for the football program they would say, “Good things happen to good people.” In fact, that was the axiom Currey liked to live by as listed in the media guide.
But good things happen more frequently to coaches who have the resources to recruit good players. At the time, about all Currey’s supporters could point to was their belief in him as a good person. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Currey lasted only one more season at UC. In 1988, the Bearcats went 3-8, including a 40-21 win over Indiana State at Nippert Stadium that ended a six-game losing streak. His final game as UC’s head coach was on November 19 of that season. The Bearcats lost to East Carolina, 49-14.
Only 2,364 fans showed up on a cold, rainy afternoon in 26,592-seat Nippert Stadium. On the top row of the Reed-Shank Pavilion on the east side of the stadium a lone fan held up a sign that read, “Fire Currey.” It was one of the few indications that anyone still cared about the beleaguered program.
For someone who covered UC football back in the days when Dave Currey was the head coach, it’s still a little hard to get used to seeing the Bearcats ranked eighth in the country as they prepare to play next week at Notre Dame, a team they’ll probably be favored to beat.
I remember when there was very little interest in UC football, either from fans or the media. If you covered the Bearcats for either of the two daily papers, it was basically something to keep you occupied until basketball practice started in the middle of October.
That changed for a few years when Brian Kelly was here and the Bearcats were in the Big East. But then he left for Notre Dame and the Big East collapsed, sending UC back to mediocrity.
This resurgence has a different feel to it. Luke Fickell doesn’t appear as eager to leave as Kelly was and has been able to land more the area’s top local high school players than any of his predecessors. Nippert Stadium has been renovated and expanded to seat 40,000. And the Bearcats were recently welcomed into the Big 12 Conference.
Here’s how far the program has come:
In the fall of 1987, Currey was conducting his weekly press conference in his office. It was an intimate gathering consisting of only three people – the Enquirer’s Tom Groeschen; Joe Minster, an old-school scribe from the Hamilton (Ohio) Journal News who always wore a coat and tie to work; and me, the beat reporter for the afternoon Cincinnati Post.
As Currey talked about that week’s opponent. Joe’s chin dropped to his chest and he began to snore ever so lightly. Maybe Joe hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, or maybe he was bored to death, but it was delightfully funny in a cynical sportswriter sort of way. Tom and I looked at each other, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh and hoping for Joe’s sake that Currey wouldn’t notice him snoring a few feet in front of his desk.
But of course Currey did notice. How could he not? To his credit, he didn’t go off on poor old Joe as most football coaches would have. He just smiled and said, “I guess this topic doesn’t really interest Joe.” With that, Joe woke up, embarrassed to learn that he had dozed off. I didn’t know whom to feel worse for, Currey or Minster.
Such was the state of the Cincinnati football program in the late 1980s. That season, my first covering UC football, the Bearcats went 4-7. They lost at No. 20 Penn State, 41-0; to No. 3 Miami (Fla.), 48-10 at Riverfront Stadium in downtown Cincinnati; at West Virginia, 45-17; and at East Carolina, 56-28. It was the fifth of what became nine straight losing seasons for the Bearcats, five of them under Currey, who never posted a winning season at UC. In 1988, Currey’s last season at UC, the Bearcats averaged only 12,254 fans per game.
Currey was a kindly middle-aged gentleman who faced overwhelming odds trying to produce a winning football program at a school with antiquated facilities and little fan support. He didn’t fit the stereotype of a college football coach. He was short of stature with a round face and a monotone voice. He was so soft-spoken it was hard to imagine him ever yelling at his players during practice. He often spoke in allegories and even apologized occasionally after he answered a reporter’s question with what he considered a schmaltzy answer.
During the Currey era, from 1984 to 1988, UC had no conference affiliation in football. The administration was committed to fielding a big-time college football program, but there was very little chance of that happening given the constraints – financial and otherwise – under which Currey operated. To maintain the guise of a major program, it scheduled games, mostly on the road, against such powerhouse programs as Alabama, Penn State and Miami (Fla.). Those games almost always resulted in a lopsided loss for the Bearcats and a sizeable check for the athletic department.
In five seasons as UC’s head coach, Currey went 19-36. The Bearcats’ finest moment under Currey might have occurred in 1986 when they nearly upset fifth-ranked Penn State at Beaver Stadium in University Park, Pa. The underdog Bearcats took the lead, 17-14, with 13:22 left in the fourth quarter. While trying to run out the clock with about six minutes left, running back Reggie Taylor was stopped on a fourth-and-one running play. After UC punted, the NIttany Lions drove 75 yards for the game-winning touchdown with 3:07 remaining, and added a safety in the closing seconds to post a 23-17 win. Penn State went on to win the national championship that season.
In my mind, the lowest point, occurred on November 6, 1987 against Division I-AA Indiana State, which had a 3-6 record. Only 5,424 fans showed up in the 56,127-seat Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis to watch the Bearcats get blown out 40-16.
Because I worked for the afternoon Post, which had no Sunday edition, I was always looking for a different angle to write for my Monday story. I called Joe Steger, the UC president, and Carl Meyer, the athletic director, to ask them about the future of the program at a time when some fans and faculty were beginning to wonder if UC was fighting a losing battle trying to field a winning major college football program on the Division I-A level and should either abolish football or downgrade to Division I-AA.
In those days, it was relatively easy to reach the UC president. Steger had freely given me his home number and never discouraged me from calling if I needed something. I found out in subsequent years how unusual that was.
“You don’t judge a rebuilding on one game,” Steger said. ”It’s like any battle in the course of a long-range war. You have games you win and you have games you lose. In terms of the talent Dave is attracting, it still bodes well for the future.”
“One game, one season doesn’t make it,” Meyer said. “You’ve got to evaluate things over a much longer haul than that.”
But of course it wasn’t just one game or one season. The Bearcats hadn’t had a winning season since 1982 when they went 6-5 under Mike Gottfried. At that point, after four years under Currey, they were 15-27. But his bosses still believed in him.
“Dave’s a super guy,” Steger said. “He’s done a great job. Remember, he’s inherited a lot of problems.”
“I think it’s a very trying time for him,” Meyer said. “There’s so much involved. I was looking back at the past eight years and there were I-AA losses in there to Youngstown State and some others. You just have to assess all sorts of things and look at it from there. Dave has made significant improvements since he’s been here. Unfortunately, sometimes the plateau of success isn’t always the plane. There’s peaks and valleys and this was one of those valleys.”
After the game Currey acknowledged that it would be hard to bounce back from such a devastating defeat. He promised to start looking at some of his younger players with an eye toward next season.
“Football’s not much fun right now,” he said.
Currey was a good man. Around UC, if you asked the athletics staff what gave them hope for the football program they would say, “Good things happen to good people.” In fact, that was the axiom Currey liked to live by as listed in the media guide.
But good things happen more frequently to coaches who have the resources to recruit good players. At the time, about all Currey’s supporters could point to was their belief in him as a good person. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Currey lasted only one more season at UC. In 1988, the Bearcats went 3-8, including a 40-21 win over Indiana State at Nippert Stadium that ended a six-game losing streak. His final game as UC’s head coach was on November 19 of that season. The Bearcats lost to East Carolina, 49-14.
Only 2,364 fans showed up on a cold, rainy afternoon in 26,592-seat Nippert Stadium. On the top row of the Reed-Shank Pavilion on the east side of the stadium a lone fan held up a sign that read, “Fire Currey.” It was one of the few indications that anyone still cared about the beleaguered program.
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