The Mirage of the Mid-Season Top 25: Cincinnati’s Great Betrayal
Let’s just be honest about what we’re witnessing here. This isn’t a story about a team heading to a bowl game with a few injuries. This is a story about a complete and total collapse of confidence, character, and a program’s identity, culminating in a Liberty Bowl appearance that feels more like a participation trophy for a team that utterly gave up on itself. We saw it happen in real time, from that scorching 7-1 start where they were ranked #16 in the US LBM Coaches Poll. They were the darlings of the Big 12, a new face showing up the old guard, and everyone in the media (myself included, briefly) was buying into the hype that this team was truly different. They had the swagger. They had the wins. They had the narrative, but what they didn’t have, apparently, was the backbone to finish the job when the calendar turned to November and the pressure truly began to mount.
The first sign of rot, the little crack in the foundation, came when they started dropping games they should have won, or at least stayed competitive in. The losses weren’t just losses; they were blowouts that exposed every weakness a #16 team isn’t supposed to have. When a team goes from a top-20 ranking to barely making a bowl game, it’s never about X’s and O’s alone. It’s about psychology, about the locker room dynamics, and about who truly stepped up when the moment demanded leadership. The narrative quickly changed from “Cinderella story” to “fraudulent contender,” and now we’re left with the wreckage: the Liberty Bowl against Navy, a game that feels less like a celebration and more like a punishment for a season that ended in utter disappointment. The question isn’t whether they can win; the question is whether they even *want* to be there in the first place, or if they’ve already checked out mentally for the holidays.
Brendan Sorsby: The Opt-Out or The Abandonment?
This brings us to the real gossip, the juicy stuff that no “proven model” from SportsLine can ever predict: the status of Brendan Sorsby. The fact that his participation is even in question, that there’s this shroud of mystery around whether he will play in the Liberty Bowl, speaks volumes about the state of the program. When a quarterback, particularly one who led the team through its early success, is suddenly hesitant to play in a bowl game, you have to read between the lines. It’s not just a simple matter of injury; it’s about priorities. In today’s NIL and transfer portal environment, a player’s decision to play in a non-New Year’s Six bowl game is a high-stakes calculation. Is Sorsby protecting himself from injury to preserve his value for the next season, potentially in the transfer portal? Or, and this is the more provocative angle, is he abandoning a sinking ship?
For the average fan, watching their team collapse and then seeing their star player potentially opt out feels like a slap in the face. It feels like a betrayal. The team worked all season to get here, and now the biggest name might not even bother to show up for the finale. This isn’t just about protecting a future paycheck; it’s about the very concept of team loyalty that has been completely eroded by the professionalization of college sports. If Sorsby isn’t playing, and the team knows it, then the psychological damage to the locker room for the actual game against Navy will be immense. How can you expect the rest of the team to fight when the general isn’t leading the charge? (It’s a rhetorical question, by the way; the answer is you can’t.) The media spin will be about protecting future earnings, but the reality for the fans and his teammates will be that he prioritized himself over the collective. That’s the cold, hard truth of modern college football.
The Humiliation of the Triple Option: A Fate Worse Than Defeat
Let’s talk about the opponent: Navy. Playing Navy, especially for a team that has clearly lost its emotional footing, is perhaps the worst kind of punishment imaginable. It’s not just a football game; it’s a physical, psychological ordeal. Navy runs the triple option, an offense so different, so tedious, so frustrating to prepare for that it requires a level of focus and discipline that Cincinnati simply hasn’t shown in the last half of the season. A team that is demoralized and ready for vacation will look absolutely lost against the relentless, ground-and-pound attack of a service academy. The triple option is designed to keep the ball away from the opponent, to grind out yardage in small, agonizing chunks, and to force defenses to play perfectly on every single down. If Cincinnati’s defensive coordinator can’t get his unit motivated for this one final stand, Navy will run roughshod over them for four quarters, potentially making this Liberty Bowl a complete and utter humiliation. It’s a game where you can’t rely on talent; you have to rely on grit, and grit is exactly what Cincinnati ran out of in November.
The “proven model” from SportsLine might predict a winner, but those models don’t account for the human element. They don’t account for the internal strife of a locker room where players are already looking ahead to the transfer portal. They don’t account for a quarterback possibly sitting out to protect his draft stock, leaving a backup who hasn’t seen meaningful reps to face an entirely unique offense. The model simply looks at numbers and records, but the reality of this matchup is about the heart, and Cincinnati’s heart has already been broken by its own high expectations. This game isn’t just about who wins; it’s about how badly Cincinnati loses its dignity in the process. We’re talking about a team that went from being ranked #16 in the country to being an absolute cautionary tale about the perils of believing your own hype. The Liberty Bowl is just the funeral for a season that died a slow, agonizing death.
The Future of Cincinnati Football: A House Built on Sand?
When you look at the trajectory of this program, the 2026 season should have been the next step toward solidifying their place in the Big 12. Instead, it exposed every weakness. The question now becomes: where does Cincinnati go from here? The collapse isn’t just about this one season; it’s about the long-term viability of a program that wants to compete at the highest level. If they can’t handle a little pressure and maintain composure through a full schedule, then they are destined to be a flash in the pan. The Liberty Bowl against Navy is a critical moment for the coaching staff to regain control of the narrative, to show that they still have command over their players, and to prove that this program isn’t just a house built on sand. But honestly, watching from the outside, it feels like the foundation has already cracked, and all that’s left now is to watch it fall completely apart in front of a national audience. The Sorsby drama, the collapse, the Liberty Bowl itself—it’s all interconnected, and it all points to a program in deep trouble.
