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Podcast: Big Bets On Campus Episode: College Football Offseason Update | Part 1 Segment: Cincinnati podcast segment **Team-Specific Podcast Notes** - **Cincinnati under 5.5 wins** — Duck said he likes the under and is **not seeing a bowl game** for the Bearcats; price noted at **-105** at DraftKings, with other shops as high as **-150**. - **Cincinnati** is viewed as a major fade: QB **J.C. French** turnover risk, a thinner skill group, and a brutal Big 12 slate with road games and matchups against many of the league’s top teams. - **Cincinnati:** Calabrese faded the Bearcats hard, citing **J.C. French’s turnovers**, a thinner WR/RB room, defensive regression, and one of the toughest Big 12 schedules. He said **5-7 or 4-8** is more likely than a bowl. Transcript excerpt: All right, we've talked about the methodology. It's time to get in here, get the plays officially off of your card. We're going to do two each from the power four here for the upcoming 2026 season. Let's start with Cincinnati. I want to talk about both their win total and your price sensitivity to this. Their win total is set at five and a half minus 105 over at DraftKings for the under. You're going to want to shop around because you can really see a huge differential up to as high as minus 150 on the under at other shops. So it makes a huge difference in terms of money that you're tying up or leaving on the table if you don't get the best number. Let's talk about this Cincinnati team because my issue right off the bat is the quarterback. And if it's JC French for the majority of this season, Cincinnati, in my opinion, is sunk. This just goes to show that the transfer portal market in terms of quarterbacks, what you have to pay just to get a below average, in my opinion, quarterback like French, who, you know, he's played in air raid offenses. He's put a lot on his shoulders. He can make a lot of throws. He can put up a lot of yardage, but he consistently turns the ball over. So that's why I feel as though there's more of a likelihood of him getting the starting job and then ending up on the bench at some point, which adds a bit of uncertainty into a play like this, because if it is Samaj James, I think he's someone who brings a lot more to the table as a dual threat. You got to keep in mind that he was the fifth rated dual threat Turnovers, going through progressions. He was under a lot of pressure, and I think we'll see a lot of that play out this year as well. They do bring in Liam O'Brien from the Ivy League to potentially compete for the backup job. So, I mean, I don't know how much we're gonna see of Samaj Jones. Maybe we see some packages with him early to add a running element, and they kind of go back and forth. But, you know, we talked about the win totals. This is one that actually hasn't moved on us. If you've been following in the app, we've had seven that have moved a full win, but this is one that hasn't, and I really don't understand. I think Cincinnati is set to be absolute garbage this season. I really don't think the staff is particularly overachieving. I think they won some games last year, and they were very fortuitous with Sorsby at quarterback. He masked so many of the defensive inefficiencies that Cincinnati had. They struggled to get pressure on the opposition. They surrendered far too many big plays defensively. It appeared at times past coverage was optional. And when I look at Cincinnati, their offense is going to be so less potent this year than it was last year, where they relied so much on the quick strike. We're not gonna have that because of the drop in personnel. The running back and receiver rooms are bare. And the offensive line surrendered its fair share of havoc, and that doesn't even chart the havoc that Sorsby was able to wiggle out of or avoid. French isn't really gonna be able to do that, so I think the defense is going to be put in worse positions this year. They're going to perform less effectively than they were able to in 2025. And even with the great quarterback talent, if you just go back and look at the close of the season after they started 7-1, it was atrocious against Utah, Arizona, BYU, TCU, and then in the bowl game loss against Navy. It's just a situation where the schedule gets tougher in Big 12 league play. These guys are projected to be laying over a touchdown, over 7.5, against Boston College and Miami of Ohio, and I can tell you with absolute certainty I'm looking to fade Cincinnati against both of those teams. They do play my third toughest Big 12 schedule per my metrics, and I just don't see this team being able to consistently get on a roll and stack the wins together. I don't have Cincinnati making a bowl game this season, and I really... when you look at the schedule, they have to play 6 of the top 7 projected finishers in my Big 12. There's just too many tough games on the schedule. There's too many unwinnable games, in my opinion. Kansas State, Arizona, even at West Virginia, who I think could emerge. Texas Tech, Utah, Houston. I don't think they win a game in that stretch. The only Big 12 league game that I'm really confident that Cincinnati should be a favorite in and will, in all likelihood, win is when they host Colorado, but by that point, it might be too little too late. They close the season at BYU, so if they do happen to be 5-6 vying for a bowl game, they're going to Provo in the end of the year. That's just going to be absolute murder's row. So I want no part of this team making a bowl game this year. I don't think they're going to. I think it's 5-7 or even likely 4-8, and I think that there's an opportunity maybe for Cincinnati to try to assess if they need to pull the plug and go in a different direction, because I'm just not a real big fan of Satterfield, and we've seen him kind of underperform at times in his tenure everywhere he's gone. All right, bigger loss. Soursby or the godfather, Corleone, in the trenches, because I think, as I just mentioned, in terms of a front-four monster player that can impact, usually I'm talking more about the edge and the pass rush, but he was someone who was either blowing up plays or at least eating up two blocks. He's someone who, unfortunately, because of his medical history and blood clots, he ended up going undrafted, but he was a huge difference maker in the Big 12 last year, and really the only, you know, thing that they can hang their hat on defensively, which at least they were stout in the middle. Which do you think is going to be the bigger loss? Like, in a dream scenario, a combination of French and, you know, some of their backup quarterbacks or gadget plays, at least, you know, to keep up the offensive floor. But I think the bottom could fall out on this defens