While Ridder respects his individual accomplishments and looks forward to being honored, it’s what happens after kickoff that is important. A Bearcats’ win would send them to their second consecutive America Athletic Conference championship with one regular-season game left on Nov. 26 at East Carolina. Cincinnati, No. 5 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, is 10-0 overall and 6-0 in the AAC.
“Sometimes as a coach, you don’t take enough time to reflect, to realize and to recognize how special that is and how special those guys are,” head coach Luke Fickell said on Tuesday about his senior class. “This will be a big week for them to be recognized, but also play a big game. This is one that they’ve been talking about and waiting for, for quite some time. I know they’re excited about it being here, and it’s going to be quite a challenge.”
“When you get to these points in time, it’s not just me,” Fickell said. “You think about Gino Guidugli and his relationship with Desmond Ridder. It’s a tough time. It’s an emotional time for everybody, but it’s also about a football game, so there’s quite a balance there.”
Cincinnati’s four-year seniors are 41-6, tied for the most wins over a four-year stretch in program history. The fifth-year seniors are 45-12. Ridder, a product of Louisville (Ky.) St. Xavier is 24-0 at Nippert Stadium.
“It’s going to be a very special moment, coming out here for our last guaranteed opportunity to play at Nippert, play in front of these incredible fans and in an incredible atmosphere against a good opponent,” Ridder said. “I could try to tell you what my emotions are going to be like, but I don’t think I’ll really know until I walk out on that field and hear my name called.”
“It’s one of those things as a coach I try not to think about and dwell upon a whole lot because it can take a lot of your energy and emotion,” Fickell said. “It’s going to be something that those guys have got to be able to balance as well because it’s a big week. It’s a huge, huge, huge game. It’s hard. It’s definitely hard. We thought about it last year when there was an opportunity for (Ridder) to leave and he didn’t. So we’ve got to enjoy another year or so with him and try not to think about it a whole lot just yet. Sometimes you start to think about it when it’s all said and done and it’s too late. Sometimes it’s too late to say your goodbyes or thank yous, but the good thing is that you know these guys well enough now that I think that in someway, somehow, they’ll be a part of your life no matter how long and how far away you are.”
“There’s a lot of guys that have been here for quite a while and have really put this program to where it is today,” Fickell added. “I don’t know if it’s 30, 30-something – I don’t know how many exactly that is. Roster management in today’s day and age is a little bit more difficult to try to exactly figure out based off of what happened last year, but we know this – there’s some special people that have done some special things, and I don’t just mean football games. I mean really change a locker room and create an expectation, create a brotherhood and create a lot of the amazing things that I know as to what football really is.”
Cincinnati is 4-1 against SMU all-time and won last season’s matchup, 42-13, when the two teams came in unbeaten. The previous two meetings both ended in overtime with Cincinnati winning 26-20 in Dallas in 2018 behind an 86-yard pick-six from James Wiggins, and SMU capturing a 31-28 victory in extra time during the last contest in Cincinnati in 2017.
Ridder passed for a career-high 352 yards againsst SMU in 2018 and rushed for a career-best 179 yards, including a 91-yard touchdown run, last season.
“They always come with a great team, and it’s always been a battle every year that we’ve played them, whether that’s been here, or we play them there,” Ridder said. “It’s just something about the energy, something about the environment. It doesn’t matter if it is here or there, they are always battles right there until the end. It’s really a fight, and it’s really a battle all the way until the end.”
SATURDAY”S GMAE
SMU at Cincinnati, 3:30 p.m., ESPN, 700
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