Sabel's Haus

Cincinnati football teams will have a chance this week to win games against Ben Roethlisberger's current team and his former team. The hard part is already done, thanks to the Bengals' victory over the Steelers on Sunday.

UC will take on Big Ben's former team, the Miami Redhawks, Saturday at 1 p.m. at Miami's Yager Stadium, about an hour northwest of Cincinnati. Miami is 0-4 and meets Cincy (4-0 overall, 1-0 Big East) the same week that the Bearcats earned their highest AP ranking ever, No. 10. The Redhawks will bring in a new quarterback, Zac Dysert, a true freshman that can scramble and can make plays. Despite Dysert, this is probably UC's easiest game of the entire schedule.

Brian Kelly's Tuesday Press Conference

- Kelly talked first about the 28-20 win over Fresno State, saying that his team needed to execute a little better on defense. They gave up a lot of third-down conversions but Fresno does have the No. 1 running back in the nation in Ryan Matthews. One thing that Kelly mentioned was that UC's offense played mistake free. If UC would have turned the ball over once, it could easily lose that game. As for the No. 10 AP ranking Kelly said, "It gets you on a couple of radio shows." He says his team doesn't buy into the hype because he doesn't buy into it. Kelly appeared on Scott Van Pelt's radio show today. Also, ESPN's Pat Forde wrote a column on UC. Here is part of it.

That was followed by an oddly intriguing home win over Fresno State on Saturday, in which Cincy had the football for just 16 minutes, ran half as many plays as the Bulldogs and was outrushed by 233 yards -- yet never trailed. None of Cincinnati's scoring drives covered fewer than 71 yards, but none lasted even three minutes. Quarterback Tony Pike, directing the Bearcats' no-huddle spread offense with aplomb, disemboweled Fresno's secondary so rapidly that the Cincy defense barely had time to catch its breath.

Pike for Heisman

A lot has been made lately around Cincy about Tony Pike winning the Heisman this year. My take on it is that his numbers are better than any other elite quarterback i.e. Colt McCoy or Tim Tebow. I wrote something earlier this week about him not having the national attention that McCoy or Tebow have. If voting were today though, I think Pike is second ahead of Tebow but behind McCoy. McCoy's numbers are about the same as Pike's but McCoy had the exposure before the season that Pike didn't.

It shouldn't matter when it comes to the voting but it will. Still, this is Cincinnati. Two years ago the thought of having a UC player even being considered for the Heisman is a huge deal. It's no different now. If Pike even is invited to New York for the ceremony, it will be one of the best individual achievements athletically that UC has ever had, and that includes basketball.

Tony Pike stats- 4 games: 93-132 passing (70.5 percent), 1,223 yards, 11 TD, 2 INT

Colt McCoy stats- 4 games: 103-145 passing (71 percent), 1,145 yards, 9 TD, 5 INT

Tim Tebow stats- 4 games: 44-68 passing (64.7 percent), 643 yards, 6 TD, 1 INT