Big 12 Football: Top 5 expansion candidates for the conference

Cincinnati is another team that has enjoyed recent success but lost out when the Big East imploded. The Bearcats were among the top teams in 2009, going undefeated but missing out on a BCS championship berth to also-unbeaten Alabama and Texas.

For a while the school was a cradle of coaches. Mark Dantonio, Brian Kelly, and Butch Jones all got their first taste of power-conference football back when the Bearcats were still in the Big East. Dantonio is still at Michigan State, churning out teams that regularly contend for Big Ten titles. Brian Kelly is still at Notre Dame, trying to get the Irish back to another championship game. Jones was fired from Tennessee last season and is currently unaffiliated with any team.

Now the team has Luke Fickell as its new head coach after a couple of uninspired seasons under Tommy Tuberville. Fickell spent one ill-fated season as the interim head coach of Ohio State after Jim Tressel resigned, but that was six years ago. He stayed on to work for Urban Meyer in Columbus and now brings the experience of working for two national champions to the Queen City.

Cincinnati is a decent market that helps fill the gap between West Virginia and the rest of the league, sitting near the fulcrum between putative north and south.