ACC Football: Top 5 expansion candidates for the conference

Cincinnati was a more recent entry to the Big East before that conference disbanded and then reclassified as the American Athletic Conference for its football members. Though they played contemporaneously with West Virginia, the Bearcats were among the teams that came in to replace Miami, Boston College, and Virginia Tech once they left for the ACC earlier in the 21st century.

Thus this would be the culmination of Cincinnati’s long climb toward a position among the college football elite. They joined the Big East just as it became an afterthought. When the Bearcats went undefeated in 2009, they were ranked behind not only Alabama and Texas but also Mountain West champion TCU.

Then they were left behind when the last few remaining members from the earlier era found new homes. Many of the teams they played with in the Big East gradually trickled away to the ACC, the Big 12, and the Big Ten until Cincinnati was effectively right back among the teams they once left back in Conference USA.

It wouldn’t take much to convince Cincinnati to jump ship once again to chase a more secure position in a Power Five league. The school tried the move once before, and the only risk would be that the ACC is getting to a point of obsolescence if it is fishing the Group of Five ranks for new members.