They have been playing varsity football at Cincinnati since 1885, when, in fact, the Bearcats enjoyed an unbeaten season.
 
Granted, Cincinnati went 1-0-1 in a pair of games against Mount Auburn that year. Since then, it’s fair to say that the Bearcats’ schedule has been upgraded considerably.
 
Still, that’s 134 years of football. And in 2009, the Bearcats’ history and legacy was altered by a mere one second - of a game that Cincinnati wasn’t even playing.
 
Here was the scenario. Cincinnati, coming off of 2008 season in which it captured the Big East championship, steamrolled through the regular season to go 12-0 and take a second straight conference title. The Bearcats clinched the perfect regular season with a thrilling 45-44 win at No. 15 Pitt - a game so revered in the Queen City that you can preorder the bobblehead to commemorate the winning play.
 
Keep in mind that this was in the Bowl Championship Series era, a time when the two teams that would play for the national championship were determined by a formula that relied on three components: a media poll, a coaches’ poll and an average computer rating that itself was derived from five different systems.
 
Cincinnati had been No. 5 in the BCS rankings entering its final game, trailing Florida, Alabama, Texas and TCU, in that order. The two BCS components that involved human beings - the media and coaches’ polls - had Cincinnati at No. 5, while the computers had the Bearcats at No. 3. The separation between Cincinnati and No. 4 TCU was miniscule - a mere 0.014 points
 
All four of the teams ranked ahead of Cincinnati were 12-0. Florida and Alabama were playing in the SEC Championship, so one of those teams was going to lose and would presumably be out of the title picture. Texas was playing a three-loss Nebraska team for the Big 12 title. TCU, having completed its regular season, was idle.
 
At a minimum, with a win against Pitt, Cincinnati was going to play in a major BCS bowl. But the thinking was that if the Bearcats won what amounted to a de facto Big East championship game, they would gain enough ground to leapfrog TCU in the BCS rankings. A win would leave Cincinnati as an undefeated outright champion of an automatic-qualifying BCS conference - and all previous teams that met that criteria ended up playing for the national title. 

Cincinnati still figured that it needed help to get to the national championship game.
 
The Florida/Alabama winner was going to be unbeaten, so everyone knew that the SEC champion would be in the final.
 
But if Nebraska were to knock off No. 2 Texas, then the door was open for either Cincinnati or TCU to claim that second spot, which would make for a painfully arduous Sunday morning while the numbers were crunched.
 
Remember that going into the final weekend, Cincinnati and TCU were separated by a hair. While TCU was in the clubhouse with its season complete, the Bearcats would have the benefit of a good win on national television to etch in the minds of poll voters and as a key data point for the computer rankings.
 
The Bearcats delivered against Pitt in front of a crowd of more than 63,000 at Heinz Field and a national ABC television audience. They trailed by 21 points late in the first half and only led once - on a 29-yard touchdown pass from Tony Pike to Armon Binns with 33 seconds left and the ensuing extra point which made it 45-44.. Pike threw for 302 yards and three touchdowns, and wideout Mardy Gilyard had 381 all-purpose yards, scoring touchdowns on a 99-yard kickoff return and a 68-yard reception.  
 
They were once again outright Big East champions and headed to a BCS bowl. But to get to the national championship game, the Bearcats needed Texas to lose.
 
“We won them all and beat some pretty good teams,” said Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly after the game. “I love Mack Brown and Texas, but we’ll be rooting pretty hard for Nebraska.”
 
Imagine the tension in the air, then, when the fourth quarter of the Big 12 Championship comes and Nebraska is holding a 12-10 lead. The Cornhusker defense was immense, dropping Texas quarterback Colt McCoy nine times, including 4.5 sacks alone from Ndamukong Suh.
 
Nebraska needed one more stop to get the win. Aside from what it would do for the national title picture, a victory for the Huskers would clinch their own spot in a New Year’s bowl. And for a time, it looked like theyhad it.
 
With Texas deep in Nebraska territory in the closing seconds, Suh flushed McCoy from the pocket and McCoy threw out of bounds to avoid the sack, but the game clock showed all zeroes. Nebraska rushed the field, and heck, there might well have been plans for a field rush in Cincinnati as well.
 
Brown and Texas had other ideas.
 
The Longhorns, who had missed out on a Big 12 championship appearance in 2008 on a loss to Texas Tech with one second left, were adamant that the game against Nebraska wasn’t over. Brown immediately and confidently raised one finger and declared, “No, no, no.”
 
Replay review indicated that when the football hit a railing out of bounds, one second was indeed left on the clock. Texas would get a shot at the game-winning field goal and the Longhorn kicker delivered. Nebraska went from storming he field in jubilation to having to make the agonizing walk to the locker room while their opponent celebrated a conference title.
 
The Texas win left Cincinnati at No. 3 in the final BCS rankings. There would be no national championship appearance for the Bearcats, who did, in fact, jump ahead of TCU in the final tally.
 
The extra second had a profound effect on Cincinnati. Brian Kelly, who would go on to be named as the Home Depot Coach of the Year in 2009, left the Bearcats in mid-December to take the head coaching position at Notre Dame. But if Cincinnati is playing in the national title game, does he make the same move? It’s not likely that Notre Dame would have waited until January to name a new coach, and it wouldn’t be prudent for a coach to leave when he has a chance to win the national championship.
 
The No. 3 finish was nonetheless a signature achievement for a program that had been playing football since the Chester Arthur presidency.  The Bearcats would go on to play in the Sugar Bowl, making their second consecutive BCS bowl appearance, where they fell to a Florida team, one that had spent most the season atop the national rankings, in the final game of Tim Tebow’s and Urban Meyer’s respective careers with the Gators.
 
The Bearcats, stung by the departure of their head coach (and offensive playcaller) had to deal with angry players who later came to understand Kelly’s decision, even if the timing didn’t help them. Cincinnati also had a staff of assistant coaches who were facing uncertainty as they were trying to prepare for a bowl game. Altogether, it made for an experience in New Orleans that went unfulfilled from Cincinnati’s perspective.
 
Instead, the Bearcats choose to focus on that transformational day in Pittsburgh, when they did their part to give themselves a chance to challenge for college football’s biggest prize. A long way from their humble origins against Mount Auburn in 1885.
 
They only missed it by a second in Texas.