Sabel's Haus

With the first pick in the fourth round the St. Louis Rams took former UC wide receiver Mardy Gilyard. The team is obviously looking to add onto a very unproductive offense a season ago and give No. 1 pick Sam Bradford weapons.

Most experts had Gilyard as a third round pick so falling to the fourth round was a little bit of a surprise. Either way, Gilyard said he is very excited to be playing with Bradford and to be in the NFL.

He'll hopefully be able to make an impact in his first year but his speed might have contributed to his drop. Off the field questions also contributed but knowing Gilyard like I do, he is a guy you want on your team.

I thought they Bengals might go after him with one of their two third-round picks but they passed up Gilyard to take Texas wide receiver Jordan Shipley.

Both receivers could play out of the slot and run about the same speed. Gilyard made it quite known he wanted to be a Bengal and stay in Cincinnati but obviously the Bengals' coaches saw something in Shipley they liked more than Gilyard.

Meanwhile, former UC quarterback Tony Pike is still on the board as I write this with about half of the sixth round to go and the whole seventh round.

I could have seen this coming. I've thought from the beginning Pike was fairly overrated. He was always considered one of the top five quarterbacks in this draft and I usually saw him ranked the fourth best ahead of Tim Tebow.

But now the other four quarterbacks are gone (Bradford, Tebow, McCoy, Clausen) and Pike is waiting. Five other quarterbacks have gone as well meaning these NFL teams are taking other quarterbacks over Pike for a reason. It also means Pike is running out of teams as options.

A decision on whether or not Tony Pike will play against UConn Saturday night has yet to be made. Brian Kelly said in his weekly press conference today that Pike is having a Breg splint sent in that should make it to Cincinnati by tonight. BK did say that he liked what he saw from Pike but only wants him to play if he feels he's ready. He said in this offense, you're going to take a hit and he has to be ready to take a hit. After being fitted for the brace, Pike will be a full participant in Wednesday's practice.

Kelly said the way he practices for UConn will determine whether or not he plays. He would prefer Pike be 100 percent and play the entire game and not split snaps during the game.

Tight end Ben Guidugli did suffer a concussion in the 28-7 win against Syracuse as well so says Brian Kelly today. Apparently Guidugli was so mad that he couldn't go back in that the training staff had to hide his helmet from him on the sideline six different times.

More to come later on the football team and basketball team. I'm heading down to football practice now to talk with Mardy Gilyard who will make more money next year than I will ever have.

-Brian Kelly announced on his radio show tonight that Tony Pike will not play against Syracuse. Kelly did allow that Pike could play in an "emergency situation" which would be highly unlikely. UC has three quarterbacks with experience either in blowouts this year or years past. Zach Collaros will start Saturday against the 3-4 Orange.

The Heisman campaign has officially started for Tony Pike.

Unfortunately, Pike won’t be playing football at the University of Cincinnati next season: Heisman Trophy or not.

UC may end up being without head coach Brian Kelly, if it's not careful.

Rumors are flying about whether Kelly will leave the Bearcats after the season for another school, Notre Dame being the most talked about.

Kelly probably wouldn’t leave Cincinnati for a lower-level SEC or PAC-10 school so Notre Dame would probably be UC’s biggest threat to take him away.

Irish head coach, Charlie Weis, could be one more painstaking loss to an inferior team away from getting the ax at the historic school.

That’s where Kelly comes in.

Who knows? Maybe Notre Dame doesn’t lose another game this season and Weis keeps his job. Then UC keeps Kelly for at least one more year.

Realistically, though, Notre Dame will lose another game and will cut the cord on Weis.

Then, Notre Dame’s powers that be throw $10 million on the table for Kelly and he leaves UC without a second thought.

To that I say, match it.

Easier said than done, I know.

Still, UC has to find some way to come up with the money and whatever else it is that Kelly may want.

Raise ticket prices, raise concession stand prices, sell plasma, have a bake sale. I don’t care what it is; just do something.

With the success of this team, fans will still come to Nippert even if ticket prices go up a few bucks.

I realize $5 extra per ticket won’t equal the millions of dollars it will take to keep Kelly around but the big wigs at UC need to find some way to make the money.

If UC is to continue producing a top-10 football program, it will have to start acting like one and Kelly might be more inclined to stay at UC if it offers him the same amount of money.

Besides, Kelly should want to become the first legendary coach at UC instead of just another one of the many at Notre Dame.

The Irish fans expect to win national championships. A UC football championship would be unheard of in Cincinnati, but Kelly has the chance to do it.

After all, another national title at Notre Dame is another notch in the bedpost. Kelly would become another one of the great coaches at Notre Dame.

A national title at UC and Kelly will have officially transformed the entire program. He would be a legend in Cincinnati. The kind of legend that has buildings named after him 30 years from now.

After all it would be the first football title at this school as opposed to the 13 national championships at Notre Dame.

We have to find a way to keep Kelly at UC.

Signs at games, Web sites, Twitter messages and everything in between.

Guerrilla advertising type stuff. If he doesn’t know he’s wanted in Cincinnati by the students and fans, he may go to Notre Dame anyway.

If we can’t find a way to keep him here, UC will still be considered a stepping-stone school for coaches to get to the next level.

We need a coach like Bobby Bowden at Florida State or Joe Paterno at Penn State – a coach who wants to be at UC for the long haul.

And if Kelly does leave, we could be right back to where the program was just four years ago. A 4-7 team that’s mediocre at best.

I don’t see why Kelly would want to coach Notre Dame anyway. He has done so much to build the UC program and has gotten them so close to the national championship (that was weird to type).

If he goes to Notre Dame, he’ll just have to rebuild that team.

So, I say we start the ‘Please stay, BK’ chant.

UC has the right coach. It just needs to find a way to keep him.

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

A win is a win is a win, and even though I thought that the Bearcats looked a little sloppy throughout the night, they seemed to be able to turn it on whenever they needed to. The result was snapping Oregon State's 26-game home winning streak against non-conference opponents, and moving up three slots to No. 14 in the AP poll.

Things that caught my eye:

- Tony Pike was not as efficient as he has been. Pike was 31-of-49 passing for 332 yards, two touchdowns and a pick. Don't get me wrong, he made some great throws. NFL-like throws. The pass across the field on the out-route in the third quarter to Mardy Gilyard was exceptional. A 15-yard gain but a 40-yard throw that had to be right there. Still he made some throws that were not catchable.

- Give a lot of credit to Oregon State. That's a very good runner in Quizz Rodgers and UC held him to 73 yards on 20 carries and a touchdown. Not to mention Oregon State was loud yesterday for that game. A good experience for the Bearcats as they move forward.

- I've said it before that I thought Oregon St. was the toughest game on UC's schedule and they came away with a 10-point win. That doesn't mean that they won't have tough games down the stretch. West Virginia at home and Pittsburgh on the road to end the season will be tough.

- Next up, UC takes on Fresno State this Saturday at noon. It will be the first home game since UC students have returned to campus. (Classes start this Wednesday.) Fresno is 1-2 but played Boise State pretty close this week. It's not a cake game but the Bearcats should be up for it in front of a packed house at the Nip.

-Another unreal performance from the Bearcats from top to bottom Saturday. Granted, Southeast Missouri State is not a team that can compete with UC, but the Cats still looked sharp in the 70-3 win. Quarterback Tony Pike was pulled just before the first half ended and still threw for 229 yards three touchdowns. Most other starters didn't play past the first half.

-Mardy Gilyard was also exceptional for the Cats. The wide receiver/utility man scored four touchdowns: two receiving, one rushing and one punt return. He became the first player to score on a run, a catch and a punt return since Maurice Jones-Drew did so for UCLA in 2005. The way Pike throws and the way he works the ball to a lot of receivers is making UC one of the top offenses in college football.

-The way the rest of the schedule plays out there is no reason why UC can't go undefeated and at least be talked about for the national championship. I realize there is a lot of football left and they could easily slip up in a game like they did against UConn last year. Next Saturday (Sept. 19) UC plays at Oregon State which could end up being its toughest test of the season. UC is 17th in the new poll, up from 23rd last week.

-Be sure to follow me on Twitter or my co-editor, Pete Marx, for the latest Bearcat news.

If there is such a thing as a statement win in the first game of the season, the Bearcats made it Monday afternoon. They dominated Rutgers from start to finish. Dominating 47-15 on the road against a conference opponent picked by many to win the Big East Conference is a statement in my book.

Things I liked:

Tony Pike was very efficient throwing for a career high 362 yards on 27-of-34 passing with three touchdowns and an interception. The one pick he threw was into a group of people but I think Pike thought no one else could get it but his own man. It just so happens that Rutgers' defensive lineman Alex Silvestro made a great one-handed catch to pick it.

-Isaiah Pead is a stud for Cincy. A Reggie Bush-type player, Pead ran for 47 yards on eight carries with a touchdown and caught two balls for 52 yards and a score.

-No. 98 Curtis Young played very well for the Cats. He did play last year but he's now in a starting role and had 11 tackles, three tackles for a loss and one sack.

-For the most part a mistake-free game for UC. Two penalties for 20 yards and the defense held Rutgers to less than 300 total yards. Jake Rogers in the kicking game was solid too.

Things I disliked:

-Not much to not like against Rutgers. Lou Holtz did say after the game that Pike was one of the elite quarterbacks in the country. Coming from Holtz, that's probably a kiss of death.



Looking forward, there is not a game on the schedule that UC cannot win. Granted there are tough games ahead (@Pitt, @South Florida, @Oregon State) but no team like Oklahoma last year when UC really didn't have a chance. The polls came out today and UC is ranked 23. Southeast Missouri State is next for the Cats at UC's Nippert Stadium at 7 p.m. Saturday

-Here is The News Record's game story written by Pat Strang.