By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

In the span of one week, the University of Cincinnati football team has gone from playing Division I-AA Rhode Island in a game that generated scant interest to playing against a team that has become the talk of the nation.

UC (5-4, 2-3 in Conference USA) plays at TCU on Saturday with a chance to knock off one of the two remaining unbeaten teams in the country, along with top-ranked Oklahoma.

The Horned Frogs (9-0, 6-0) are ranked No. 10 nationally by the Associated Press and No. 6 in the Bowl Championship Series standings.

If they finish in the top six, they will become the first school from a non-BCS conference to qualify for one of the four BCS bowl games.

For one week at least, the UC football program will be on the national sporting consciousness as it attempts to derail TCU, which has won 12 straight games at home.

"We've got an opportunity," said UC coach Rick Minter. "We're playing a team that everybody in the nation is talking about right now."

This is a game the Bearcat players have been waiting for all season. UC beat TCU in overtime last year in its season opener and the Bearcats shared the C-USA championship with the Horned Frogs.

But when college football analysts talked about C-USA at the start of the season, TCU was frequently mentioned as conference champion with no mention of UC.

As some UC players put it last summer, it was as if the Bearcats' co-championship didn't exist.

"I told them this back then," Minter said. "You don't get respect given to you. You earn respect."

Having said that, Minter concedes that he sometimes feels the sting of the slights that are directed at his football program despite three straight bowl trips.

That sting was especially sharp in the Big East Conference's expansion announcement last week when Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese failed to mention UC when he talked about adding three new football programs.

"You don't think I heard it when the commissioner of the Big East sits there and talks about Louisville and South Florida and doesn't even mention UC football?" Minter said. "What we've got to do is go win and then people will say, 'I'm glad we've got Cincinnati in the Big East.'

"Don't think those things don't go unnoticed when that commissioner doesn't even mention us. That's a slap in the face."

The Bearcats can take a big step toward changing that perception this week at TCU.

"Obviously," Minter said, "that would be a great boost for us."

UC at TCU

When: 3 p.m. Saturday.

Records: UC (5-4, 2-3 C-USA) TCU (9-0, 6-0).

Remaining UC schedule:

Saturday	Texas Christian
Nov. 22	At Memphis (6-3)
Nov. 28	Louisville (7-2)

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E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com