For the past seven years, University of Cincinnati football coach Rick Minter has walked into Nippert Stadium on game days, looked up at the empty silver bleachers and wondered what it would be like to see the stadium filled with fans. Today, he finally finds out.

        The Bearcats will face Purdue in their season opener before a sellout crowd of 35,000 at Nippert, the largest home crowd in school history and the first UC game ever sold out in advance of game day.

        “I thought our colors were silver there for the longest time,” said Minter, who begins his eighth season at UC today. “If we could have been silver and red, it would have looked like it was full every day.”

        UC athletic director Bob Goin says he's not qualified to say whether today's game is the most important in the 113-year history of the Bearcat football program. There's no league championship at stake, no bowl bid, not even the bragging rights that go with winning a rivalry game.

        But this much is indisputable: Never before have so many favorable factors come together for a UC football game the way they have for today's 2:30 p.m. kickoff. Along with the sellout crowd, a national TV audience will watch on ESPN2. The Bearcats are coming off a bowl season playing against a Big Ten team that reached the Rose Bowl in January.

        For Goin, who spent five years as athletic director at football-mad Florida State, this is the way it should be every week.

        “The ultimate goal is to have this kind of setting,” he said. “With those things in place, now the measuring stick is, are we good enough to compete at the level we're competing at? If we're not, we have to improve that level. It's really an evaluation of where we are.”

        UC officials, who urge fans to arrive early, have been working to ensure the crowd has a pleasant experience. The hope is that if the fans who don't normally attend a UC game have a good time, they'll be inclined to return.

        Ultimately, though, the best way to please customers is to deliver a victory. Because these circumstances are so unusual at UC, that puts a lot of pressure on the Bearcats in their home opener.

        “It's a big game for us and a big game for the university,” junior linebacker Willis Edwards said. “We know if we do well, the fans will come back for more games.”

        And if they get blown out by the Boilermakers, who are one spot out of the Top 25 in both major polls, they will seem like the same old Bearcats, despite all the trappings.

        Fortunately for UC, there is an encouraging precedent. Last year, the Bearcats knocked off Big East power Syracuse at Nippert early in the season. Two years ago, they beat Big Ten power Wisconsin at home.

        “Cincinnati is really looking forward to playing this game,” Purdue coach Joe Tiller said. “They certainly won't be intimidated.”

        The Boilermakers, who return 16 starters from last season, will be eager to see how redshirt quarterback Brandon Hance performs in his first start, the first game of the post-Drew Brees era. Look for the Bearcats to try to pressure him into mistakes.

        UC, with 10 starters back from its Motor City Bowl team of last season, will open with senior Adam Hoover at quarterback. He'll be making the third start of his career. The Bearcats have two quality running backs behind him in senior Ray Jackson (808 yards last year) and junior DeMarco McCleskey (500 yards).

        “There's going to be a rush of electricity going through our players when they take that field,” Minter said. “We hope to go out there and develop an attitude about what kind of team we can be.”

UC's biggest game ever?

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