Pike to Binns: Ten years later, an oral history of UC football’s most iconic moment
Ava Arnold It is a moment etched into the minds and souls of Bearcats, one immortalized by three words: Pike to Binns.
On Dec. 5, 2009, the 11-0 Cincinnati Bearcats traveled to face the Pittsburgh Panthers in Heinz Field to decide the Big East champion. UC, coming off an 11-3 season and Orange Bowl appearance in 2008 under head coach Brian Kelly, was still somewhat of a surprise juggernaut in 2009. They entered the game ranked No. 5 in the country and equipped with a top-10 offense, led by unheralded senior quarterback Tony Pike, stud sophomore running back Isaiah Pead, and stellar receiving core featuring Mardy Gilyard, Armon Binns, D.J. Woods and tight end Ben Guidugli.
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An ugly start had them facing a three-score deficit in the first half, but the Bearcats rallied to a dramatic, last-minute, program-altering victory, courtesy of a 29-yard touchdown pass from Pike to Binns with 33 seconds remaining. Cincinnati won 45-44, securing a league crown, a record 12 wins and an undefeated regular season.
“Twenty-three-year-old Tony Pike waits for the snap, has the football,” was how Bearcats radio play-by-play announcer and Hall of Famer Dan Hoard set the scene, a call and play now enshrined in bobble-head form. “Short drop, lobs one down the sideline for Binns… He’s got it! Touchdown! Touchdown!”
There was no shortage of storylines over the course of that historic 2009 campaign: the program’s astonishing ascendence under Kelly and quest to reach consecutive BCS bowls, Pike’s two-year emergence, Gilyard’s electrifying artistry in the open field, the crescendoing Kelly-to-Notre-Dame rumors that dominated the season’s final stretch and ultimately came to fruition, and a Sugar Bowl appearance better off forgotten.
All of it was trumped by that one game, that one play — a hall-of-fame team captured in a single six-second span of glory.
“December 5 has become like a holiday in this city, and I absolutely love it,” says Pike, who now hosts a local sports talk radio show and serves as the Bearcats sideline radio reporter. “I am here for all of it.”
To mark the 10-year anniversary of that unofficial, adopted holiday, The Athletic Cincinnati spoke with Pike, Binns, Kelly, Hoard and many others involved in that 2009 season about the game, the throw, the catch and the legacy of the most iconic moment in the history of UC football.
There was plenty at stake as the Bearcats took the field in Pittsburgh on a cold, snowy, early December afternoon. A victory meant not only a Big East championship, but also guaranteed a second-straight BCS berth and gave Cincinnati an outside shot at reaching the BCS National Championship game. A loss, however, would have spoiled a perfect regular season and league title and relegated UC to the Meineke Car Care Bowl.
Tony Pike (UC quarterback): I grew up going to all those UC games and being a fan, and I had never been around something like that season. Even the year before was different because we weren’t ranked as high, had gotten blown out at UConn, and everything seemed to happen kind of quick.
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Brian Kelly (UC head coach): It started with that Rutgers win on Labor Day win. It created a lot of energy for the program, and it was so decisive that I think it created a confidence that was really palatable. And that carried itself into the Illinois game, a resounding win against a Big 10 team.
Armon Binns (UC wide receiver): It was a weird time. There was a lot going on. Obviously the season was crazy, we were winning, ranked really high. I don’t think national championship was what we were thinking about though. We were more focused on the Big East, trying to repeat, become outright champs. And then there were all the rumors about Coach Kelly and everything going on.
Pike: It was a distraction not so much in the team circles, but everyone following the team — media, friends, family. Instead of asking about the game, they were asking about Brian Kelly. So that part was a distraction, but inside the locker room, it was pretty much as normal as I remember.
Dan Hoard (Bearcats radio play-by-play broadcaster): I remember being ticked off by the fact that if UC didn’t win, they would be going to the Meineke Car Care Bowl. This is kind of a weird subplot, but the second-best bowl in the Big East back then was the Gator Bowl. And the Gator Bowl had already decided to take West Virginia instead of the loser of Cincinnati and Pitt. So that really emphasized to me how high the stakes were: undefeated, BCS bowl, or the freaking Meineke Car Care Bowl.
Pike: All the buzz and excitement surrounding that, you’re never going to replicate it. There was so much riding on one game. It was either win the league championship and play in a BCS bowl, or don’t and play in the Meineke Car Care Bowl. We weren’t talking about a National Championship as much as we were getting back to another BCS bowl.
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Mo Egger (Bearcats radio producer, pre-game/halftime/post-game host): Can Cincinnati play for a national championship? I went into that Pitt game fully confident that they were going to win. But I remember that week, spending time thinking about the fact that UC football — which not that long ago, faculty on campus tried to organize to get rid of — is going to play for a national title? That’s what we’re talking about here.
Tom Gelehrter (Bearcats radio sideline reporter): Even before the game, noticing the pockets of fans in red and black. There are tons of Bearcats fans all over Heinz Field, and the conditions were just horrific. It was blowing snow, exactly what you think an early December game would be like in Pittsburgh. It was football weather.
Hoard: It was unbelievable: 60,000-plus, in brutal conditions, for Pitt versus Cincinnati. Pitt doesn’t typically draw well at home. It’s the Steelers’ stadium, and all the times we used to go there, the crowds typically weren’t all that good. But Heinz Field was rocking, and it was the first time I ever remember seeing a UC fanbase travel like that when it wasn’t a bowl game. There had to be at least 10,000. Maybe double, I don’t know. But it was a huge contingent of Cincinnati fans. That really seemed like a program-changing moment to me.
Sean McDonough (ABC play-by-play broadcaster): They were really good. They had a lot of talent. There was nothing fluky about what they were achieving up to that point, and certainly nothing fluky about what they accomplished that day.
The Bearcats fell behind 31-10 late in the second quarter after a blunder-filled start that featured a pair of Pike interceptions and a botched punt. Brian Kelly even had backup quarterback Zach Colloras warm up on the sideline early in the second half.
Pike: Whenever people tell me it was the greatest game they’ve ever been to, I say yeah, the second half was fantastic. I don’t like to remember any of the first half.
Gelehrter: Everybody believed they were going to win. It hadn’t always been easy, but they overcame every bit of adversity all season long to get to this point. And then the game starts and it’s just an utter disaster. It fell apart so quickly, and of course, people are asking if the team is distracted, or if Brian Kelly is distracted, or are the coaches distracted? What is going on that is letting this game get so insanely out of hand?
Egger: When they fell behind early, there was a sense of anger, that this wasn’t how it was supposed to end. That they’re going to get the shit kicked out of them, the coach is going to leave and they’re going to play in whatever crappy bowl game they get sent to.
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John Goebel (UC running back): My parents went to that game, my girlfriend who is now my wife, my friends from Cleveland, and they all talk about how tough it was for them because it was freezing and the fans were nuts. They wanted to fight all the fans because they kept playing that stupid Buh buh buhhhh song — what’s it called — Sweet Caroline!
Hoard: I think it was Pitt. That was a really good Pitt team and they scored on their first five possessions of that game. It took a while for UC to figure out what the heck was going on. Pike didn’t have a very good game — he had three turnovers in that one, and they only had 10 on the whole season leading into it. So that was highly unusual. If the coaching speculation had something to do with it, I guess I wouldn’t be surprised in retrospect, but I didn’t feel it then.
Binns: I don’t think it was the distractions. Our team was really close. But Pitt did a good job of owning their own field. They jumped out on us, and we weren’t really expecting the barrage that came early.
Chris Jurek (UC offensive center): It was good on good. They were ranked, we were ranked. They were a good team.
Greg Forest (UC quarterbacks coach): Offensively we just had some miscues here and there. Tony had a couple, and Brian was all over me about Tony’s miscues and why he wasn’t playing well. I was trying to calm him down and defend Tony. I remember telling Brian that one interception wasn’t Tony’s fault, the defender just made a hell of a play. Then Tony went out and threw another interception.
Pike: I don’t know why it started so bad. It was snowing, but still a slippery snow. It wasn’t sticking. Playing on Heinz Field is different, so little stuff like a three-step drop and footing was so much different. And Pittsburgh played really well. Their gameplan, I don’t know how many carries Dion Lewis had, but I know it was north of 40. We knew they wanted to take the air out of the ball, and when that happens, it naturally puts more pressure on each possession, and you start pressing a little bit. And the more you press, the more you hurt yourself because you’re over-thinking things.
Forest: They were running the ball really well, and they were keeping the ball from us a little bit.
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Gelehrter: To this day, I believe it was just a mind game to get Tony Pike reset when Brian Kelly had Zach Collaros warm up. I don’t think Zach was going in. I think Brian would have ultimately pulled the trigger if he had to, but I think at the time he had Zach warm up, it was just to get Tony’s attention. To refocus Tony and slap him in the face — without actually slapping him in the face.
Pike: I saw the TV replay of the game just a few months ago, before this year’s Ohio State game. I was just scrolling through and it was on ESPN Classic. It came on at like 11, I was already laying down in bed, I’m driving up to Ohio State early the next morning. The next thing I know it’s 2 a.m. and I’m all jacked up. It was super bizarre. But I didn’t realize until that moment how close I was to being benched. There wasn’t talk of that on the sideline. I remember seeing Zach warm up and thinking to myself, OK, I better figure it out. But there was never talk from him to me about me being benched. Safe to say, if I had one more bad series, I could have been benched. Re-watching the game, I was just bad in the first half. Late on some reads, throwing late across my body. And Pittsburgh made a couple really nice plays defensively. But we always knew that because we were such a quick-strike team, it only took one or two plays to get us going.
Binns: There was chatter, and Zach had just come off a really hot streak for those four games. I think everybody was wondering on the sideline if he would pull the trigger, but he stuck with the older guy and it worked out in the end. But it was kind of a weird feeling on the sideline. We didn’t know if he was going to panic and go with Zach or stick it out with Pike.
Pike: At halftime, BK told me I better figure it out or I was going to be apologizing to the team for ruining their perfect season. That was our halftime adjustment.
Brian Kelly: No, I wasn’t close. C’mon, he knew I wasn’t going to bench him. That’s why he kind of had that look. You’re not going to bench me.
Pike: My junior year, I stayed pretty quiet. My senior year, I felt like I had a little bit of equity and started chirping back a little bit.
Binns: The funny part about it was that there was never a point where we felt like we were getting blown out. It never felt like the game was as out of hand.
Isaiah Pead (UC running back): I don’t remember why we specifically got down, but I think it was mainly self-inflicted wounds. Not executing the right ways. And that happens. But we weren’t discouraged. We didn’t feel like we were down by 21. We just needed a momentum swing, something good to happen.
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Egger: The offense was just miserable. Bad weather, snow. Cincinnati looked stuck in the mud, disorganized, maybe a little bit unprepared. It was 31-10, and before Mardy brought the kick back, I thought that if Cincinnati didn’t score on that possession, the game was over.
Goebel: I don’t remember a single moment of feeling nervous that we were going to lose. There was something about that team, there was a lot of confidence. And I really didn’t feel like we were losing because they were better than us. We just had to smack them in the mouth after halftime. Because once Mardy returned the kickoff, it felt like that was going to happen.
Pike: In the first half, all I remember was how cold it was. In the second half, I don’t remember noticing the weather.
Down 21 with just over a minute remaining before halftime, the Bearcats put a brief halt on the decimation when Mardy Gilyard returned a kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown that stopped the bleeding and swung the momentum of the game. It wasn’t an immediate turnaround in the third quarter, during which Pike served up his third interception of the game, but he did connect with Gilyard on a 68-yard score to cut it to a one-possession game. By the time the fourth quarter started, the Cincinnati offense had finally brought the kettle to boil.
Pead: I vividly remember being on the sideline, we were down 21, they had just scored, and everybody was just huddled together talking. No one was discouraged, no one had their heads down. We were the defending champs. We don’t break. Literally, that play, Mardy made that cut, that dead-leg cut that got him across the field, and he took it all the way. That was exactly what we needed. We weren’t dead, we just needed a spark.
Binns: The thing about Mardy is that every week, any time he was touching a return, something big, something special could happen. He made the first guy miss and the Red Sea kind of parted, and I think at that point we knew that it was on. We knew we were going to go on a run. We were just waiting for that one play to get us going. Like he did all year, Mardy made that one play, and we rolled from there.
Pead: I literally looked up in the sky and started laughing. I said, ‘God, this is how you going to do it? You going to make it dramatic like this?’ We all knew we were going to score. Mardy took that kick back, and that was exactly what we needed.
Goebel: I think that I possibly got away with, well, a block that had to happen. Let’s call it a low block. But I got up and got to run in with Mardy.
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Marcus ‘Bones Bagaunte’ Barnett (UC wide receiver): Once he took that back, it’s game time, man. It’s a wrap.
Gelehrter: All season long Mardy Gilyard had been this amazing playmaker, and it’s 31-10 and really feels like all hope is lost, and Mardy returns that kickoff for a touchdown and all of the sudden there’s a heartbeat. That’s all you need.
Hoard: I remember what I said on the broadcast. After he ran it back, I said something to the effect of it being like Frankenstein’s monster. They’re alive. And then I did the heartbeat sound effect: thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump. That’s what it felt like. Thank God Dave Wannstedt kept kicking off to Mardy. He had 250-plus kick return yards in that game.
Gelehrter: I was fortunate enough to always be in the locker room with the team, and the team felt good. The swagger was back. There was no panic. Brian Kelly throughout his tenure at UC was so good at knowing when to push the right buttons. After his halftime speech, it just felt like the Bearcats were going to win that game. I saw it.
Pike: I like to tell people it was my tackle right before the half on my interception that really saved the game. So many times with quarterbacks, you want to get easy completions early. We weren’t able to do that, and Pittsburgh had a lot to do with that. In the second half, we were able to do that.
Forest: Tony made a check and threw it to Mardy. It actually wasn’t a great ball, but Mardy made an adjustment to it and ended up cutting back across the field to score on a long pass play. That got us right back into the game, and I think when Tony made that check and hit Mardy, that was one of those things that reminded our guys we were all right.
Hoard: The defense started getting stops. They hadn’t stopped them at all in the first half. And when Mardy turned a relatively short pass into a 68-yard score, you really knew they were back in the game.
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Andre Revels (UC linebacker): There may have been a couple Xs and Os that moved around, but I really think it was more of a mental thing. Throughout the game, it was more of a surprise that they were actually moving the ball on us, because it didn’t feel that way. We weren’t being out-physicaled, but they were able to find that one crease and capture yards. I think once the second half started, we knew it had to stop.
Binns: Like it was all year, when our offense got rolling, we caught fire. We put some drives together, and once we got toward the end of the third quarter, we just couldn’t wait to get the ball back. We felt like every time we got the ball, we would go down and score. Get it back to us, get it back to us, defense. We’ll put more points on the board.
Pike: You could feel with each touchdown the tension in that stadium rising. And when that happens, our confidence was rising. It wasn’t like anything was said in the huddle. You just knew looking around at each person that we were good.
Egger: As the game progressed, you really got the sense that as cliche as it sounds, if they get the ball last, they’re going to win.
After briefly knotting the score at 38, Pitt scored with 1:36 remaining in the fourth quarter on a five-yard Dion Lewis run. But on the extra point attempt, backup quarterback Andrew Janocko dropped the snap, leaving the Panthers with only a six-point lead and setting up UC’s famed final scoring drive.
Jake Rogers (UC kicker): I signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after college, and I was out at dinner in Tampa, and this gentleman came up to me and says, ‘Are you Jake Rogers?’ And I’m thrown off. I’m in Tampa, this random stranger comes up. But I said that I was, and then he asked, ‘Do you remember the Pitt game when the quarterback dropped the hold?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, man, I felt terrible.’ He says, ‘That was me!’ It was Andrew Janocko.
Jim Kelly (Bearcats radio color commentator): When the extra point was botched, that’s when I knew, I truly knew. We’ve all had those feelings — fate, whatever you want to call it — I had all the confidence in the world that we were going to win that game.
Binns: No doubt. That’s exactly what we’re thinking. I don’t think there was a single person in that huddle who didn’t think we weren’t going to go down and score. When they missed that extra point, they left the door cracked. Let’s go kick this thing open and win this thing.
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Egger: When they didn’t convert the PAT, game over. UC is going to win.
Goebel: It was too good to be true.
Rogers: You feel bad. It’s a brotherhood. But on the other hand, it was a huge part of our ultimate success that game. But you feel terrible for them.
Gelehrter: There’s the opening. The stars have aligned, this game isn’t going to overtime, and the Bearcats are going to win this game. You had seen it too much — this is what the team and staff was built for, for moments like this.
Revels: If we had the ball, we weren’t going to come up short at that point.
Hoard: The final drive was set up by another strong return from Mardy Gilyard. And you definitely felt there was plenty of time — 1:36 on the clock, with Tony Pike and Mardy Gilyard and D.J. Woods and Isaiah Pead and Armon Binns. The way things were going for that team all year, you certainly thought they had a decent chance.
Pike: It was a simple drive. A couple easy completions. There was one scramble, when I was able to get out of the pocket and Mardy cut off his route and came back. It was kind of a QB 101 no-no, I threw late across my body to the middle of the field, but Mardy made the catch. And it all led up to the pass with Binns where things were just rolling at that point. First one to Mardy, then D.J. Woods, then the longer Mardy catch on the scramble, and then to Binns. That’s what we did all year. We had timeouts, we played a fast enough pace. We weren’t really worried about the clock at all.
Hoard: Mostly it was short stuff. There were three passes before Pike to Binns, and none of them were way down the field. But that’s what they were doing all year — they averaged about 40 points a game. Nobody stopped them. And once Tony was hot, that’s what they did. I can’t say that any of those completions made me think negatively of the Pitt defense, because that’s what UC was doing to people that year.
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Barnett: We were just locked in. Everybody was making their reads. That’s the crazy thing about football — you have to get 11 guys on the same page. And that’s what it looks like, it looks effortless when everybody is on the same page.
Binns: Their gameplan was to stop Mardy. It didn’t work great, but you could tell that was their whole deal. They were going to sell out on Mardy and make me and D.J. and the other guys win one-on-one. We figured it out and they started getting me going, D.J. was making some plays in the slot, and it was just pick your poison down the field. We took what they gave us.
Brian Kelly: The last drive, I remember how they were dropping eight on the last drive, and we had to just kind of manage the clock. And then I think they got a little bit impatient, and went Cover-0 or Cover-1, and Tony does what he does and found the one-on-one matchup.
Pike: We had forced Pittsburgh’s hand. In that situation as a defense, you just want to keep everything in front of you. But we had gotten down far enough where we could take shots at the endzone without it being a Hail Mary. It took them out of that prevent mode.
Binns: I think the play-call was ‘chair’? Something like that.
Forest: The play was Far Cowboy Spread 52 Chair. Armon had a 10-yard hitch route that could check to a go route in press coverage.
Binns: It was a three-by-one formation, then empty with the running back out there, putting everyone else to the field and isolating me one-on-one. The whole year, guys would call me Mr. Two Minutes. Anytime we did a two-minute drill in practice, I would try to end it early with a deep shot. We got down there, I got the one-on-one. I knew he was going to throw it to me as soon as we lined up and I saw the coverage, so I just knew I had to beat him. Just get on top and make the play.
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Pike: I know we were three-by-one, and Mardy had such a great game and was so dynamic. Most of the day, they were in two-high with two safeties, or they were playing straight up. The original play call wasn’t a shot to the endzone but meant to keep working it downfield. But they came out of that break, and to the trips side, they rolled a safety down. So they have one high safety in the middle of the field, and he’s thinking the same thing as everyone else in the stadium — they’re going to Mardy’s side again. Whenever I saw that at any point in the year, I knew Binns had a one-on-one matchup.
Brian Kelly: What I saw was that the play call was such that we were going to get an opportunity to throw the ball down the field. And I didn’t think that would happen, because I thought they would just stay in zone, and it would be a question of whether we had enough time to get down the field. I was a little surprised, to be honest with you.
Jurek: I remember Tony calling the play, and then looking up, checking the field. Obviously there was snow at the time, but as offensive linemen, you love that stuff. We just had to keep Tony clean.
Pead: I believe I was out wide. Empty backfield. I had a five-yard dig. I was a decoy. (laughs) I basically just had front-row seats for whatever was about to happen on the field, maybe go catch a block once someone catches the ball.
Brian Kelly: We were in no-back. And we were running hitches because they were just dropping off, but those get converted to go-routes when it’s press man. So that was just a conversion. Tony and Armon looked at each, and the rest worked out pretty good.
Barnett: Pike will give us a chance. So when they came out in that coverage and we saw one-on-one backside, we knew where we were going. And they pressed him. Like, why would you do that? We were the No. 1 receiving core in the nation. No one presses us.
Forest: That was a check we had in the game: if we get Armon one-on-one on No. 7, we’re picking on him. Obviously Tony saw it in the game and made that check.
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Pike: I believe I just gave him an open hand. It was our hitch signal, but a hitch converts to a fade against press. It was as nonchalant as we could have, and there’s a quick second of eye contact. He’s probably out there like please, please signal over here. The whole fate of that season changes if I’m blind to that, or if he is. I didn’t want to draw any more attention to what we’re doing beyond giving Armon that signal. Sometimes if you check, a defense will check. We wanted to keep it as quiet and low-key as possible.
Binns: I knew if we got pressed and we got single-high safety, the ball was coming to me. Seeing it was just me and the cornerback, all right, this is you right here. Tony is looking at you, everything is on the line, let’s go do it.
Pike: I think they felt they needed to change something up. And the other aspect was the game that Mardy had. They didn’t want Mardy to keep making plays on them. Because for most of the year, Mardy was the big, dynamic playmaker. But on third-and-eight, I knew Armon would get to nine yards and catch the ball. So he became almost a go-to for me as the season wore on.
Hoard: It felt like UC did the right thing against the defense Pitt called. They were obviously shading in Mardy Gilyard’s direction, so Tony stepped to the line of scrimmage, saw which way the safety was playing it and knew he had one-on-one coverage. I mean if you watch the TV replay, the color commentator mentions that matchup before the snap. So if the color guy can see that, then certainly Tony did too.
Egger: Mardy got all the run, and deservedly so, but Armon was a really good player. I remember being elated for him. He was a good kid, and as good as he was, people rarely talked about him.
Pike: The big thing about that play was the job Jeff Linkenbach did at left tackle. Pitt jumped for an offside penalty, that was the flag, but Jeff was still able to get his hand on the lineman. That could have been a sack and we move up five yards, but Jeff gets a hand on him, I look the safety left and then Binns.
Pead: I just remember running my route, looking back, seeing him throw it, then looking down the other way and seeing Binns. That’s what Binns does. He was that guy. Throw it up, he’s going to make it happen.
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Jurek: I’m pretty sure I was the only guy on the line who didn’t have anybody over me, so I was just looking to help, and I remember seeing the ball in the air and tracking it and seeing him dive and hoping he made the catch. Next thing you know, the official throws his hands up, and I kind of lost track from there.
Binns: Honestly, once the play snapped, I did my release, and once I saw the ball in the air, it went dark. I blacked out for a second. Next thing I know, they’re dog-piling me. But I guess I caught it.
Brian Kelly: You’re so in the moment, I wasn’t even thinking about anything else other than, Did he catch it? You can’t really see it, it’s down in the corner — did he catch it? Then somebody grabbed me around the neck and that.
Pike: We found that rhythm — whatever they did, we were going to have an answer for them. We were clicking. For as many moving parts that went into that last play, it just felt like I lobbed a fade to an open receiver. If you see 11 guys on defense, that’s really imposing. But that play, it was just me and Armon. When you think about the three-by-one, and the defense rotating, and looking the safety off, and blocking the guy who jumps offside, and Armon going to the ground and securing the catch. There’s all that, but when I look back, it was just a fade route we did every day in practice.
Binns: It goes back to repetition. Pike and I probably threw hundreds of fade balls just up the sideline. It was something we worked on every day. So when you get in the game, you just snap back into muscle memory.
Revels: We can do it. We are doing it. Oh, we did it.
Jurek: Two-minute drive to win the game, cold, snowy weather, on the road, in a hostile environment. You can’t ask for anything better than that. That’s what dream you about. At least as an offensive lineman.
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Ryan Koslen (UC associate sports information director): I didn’t get to see the play. Tommy G tackled me.
Gelehrter: I did. I did tackle him.
Hoard: I do remember on the play that Jim Kelly removed his headset. Which was very nice of him. He didn’t want to have that moment where he just loses it and it’s hard to hear either of us because we’re both going bananas. So he took his headset off for a while and set it down on the table and let me do my thing.
Jim Kelly: At times in the past when there have been program-changing moments, I would get into these screaming fits. So what I decided was that once they got to a point on the field where they could take a shot, I was going to take my headset off. I didn’t trust myself to not say anything. But before that play — I didn’t know it would be that play — I took the headset off and put it down.
Hoard: You don’t hear him say anything, and it’s because he recognized that this was the moment.
Egger: Any trace of professional decorum flew out of that broadcast booth.
Hoard: Yeah. It was bedlam. Now that’s a big booth. Mo was on an upper level, and Jim and I are spread apart because it’s a wide table. But we were going bonkers, thrusting our fists into the air, making fools out of ourselves. In a good way.
Jim Kelly: So the play happened, and to this day, 10 years later, I can replay that moment in my mind. Every second of it. And I was overcome with emotion. I can’t believe we did this. I’ve seen this program at some pretty low points as both a player and a broadcaster. Certainly that was a high. Nothing can top that one. I didn’t put the headset back on after the extra point. It took me a few seconds to regain composure. It really did.
Hoard: Jake Rodgers had missed an extra point in the fourth quarter, missed a field goal — a long field goal — earlier in the game. With the temperature and the snow falling and the conditions, no kick was a gimme. So you were paying very close attention to extra points, more than you normally would, just because the weather conditions made it seem possible that they would miss. Naturally, you’re shocked when the holder drops a good snap, but under those conditions, it was understandable.
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Rogers: Well, holy crap. We just scored to tie. But it’s one of those in kicking that you focus on your kick and move on. That game was an emotional rollercoaster, for everybody, but also personally. I had a blocked punt, missed field goal and missed PAT. So pretty far south. But you go up to the next kick and approach it with nothing from the past.
Pead: When our kick went through, you could hear the breath come out of the stadium. It was great.
Rogers: Confident in the snap, confident in the hold and we put it through. Won the game.
Pike: Honestly, after that play, I’m not sure what my next memory is. I remember celebrating on the field, but I don’t remember a ton from the locker room. It’s weird, there’s a gap in there.
Pead: I remember hearing that freaking song they kept playing that entire game — “Let’s go Pitt!” — all game, man. Their defense was trash talking. And then I remember they just walked off the field, they couldn’t shake hands, they were crying. It just felt good to withstand the storm.
Binns: I will never forget the pandemonium. Especially being on the road, we had all our fans in one pocket, and we went over there and it was complete chaos. Guys crying, yelling, screaming. We’re in the locker room partying hard. It was an unbelievable feeling. I’ll never forget that moment, the joy that was on everyone’s face of what we had just accomplished.
Pike: I know there was a hug between Coach Kelly and I, and a moment of everything coming together, for both of us and what that season was. So many people watched the games and saw the yelling. But we hugged after the game and we were both emotional. That game itself was kind of indicative of my career at UC. It started terrible. For three-and-half years I was stuck down the depth chart, and you rise out of that and finish the best way you possibly can. That game was kind of a microcosm of my career at UC.
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Goebel: As much as Coach Kelly was hard to play for sometimes, he gave us a sense of leeway and the confidence to be ourselves and play to our strengths. So that team was super tight.
Barnett: It was insane. I don’t remember much. But it felt like we won at home.
Goebel: It was a party on the bus. There were some things… let’s just say we were definitely very excited to be undefeated and clinch the Big East Championship. And we wanted to celebrate, and we made it happen. We had great senior leadership, and they came prepared.
The Bearcats were Big East champs and undefeated, ultimately earning a spot in the Sugar Bowl against Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators. They also just narrowly, devastatingly missed out on a shot at the national championship when the Texas Longhorns were awarded one second on the game clock following a replay review. It gave them enough time to beat Nebraska on a game-winning field goal that sent them to face Alabama in the title game.
On Dec. 10, less than a week after the game in Pittsburgh, Brian Kelly was named the head coach at Notre Dame, leaving offensive coordinator Jeff Quinn to coach the team through the bowl game, which the Bearcats lost 51-24.
A decade later, despite the unfortunate circumstances under which the season — and Kelly’s tenure — ended, “Pike to Binns” has become the enduring representation of the 2009 team, which was inducted into the University of Cincinnati Athletics Hall of Fame this past October.
McDonough: You’re in this business, at least I am, to do games like that. You hope you get lucky enough that 10 years later people are still talking about it. That’s one that I’ll remember forever. It was a classic.
Egger: Everybody you talk to about that game can tell you where they were. I’ve talked to people who were at the game and left at halftime, who were watching it at RedsFest, who were at the game and went out and got into fights into the parking lot.
Pike: So many people followed that team and drove to Pittsburgh that day. I still hear so many stories about people watching in their basement, celebrating with their kids. That type of stuff, it’s cool that environment was created that day.
Jim Kelly: I know things have changed in terms of BCS versus the College Football Playoff, but that game, that season proved that it is possible for somebody outside of the traditional power teams to somehow work themselves into a national championship conversation. Much harder even today than it was back then, but I do believe there is still a chance. During spring ball every year we have the captain’s breakfast. And that year Brad Jackson, who was a linebacker in the 1990s, came back and he said, ‘Why not us?’ at that breakfast. And they went out and did that.
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Gelehrter: It put Bearcats football on the map. The year before we had won the league and gone to the Orange Bowl, and that was good and Brian Kelly was getting a lot of attention. But I don’t think it got as much attention nationally as the 2009 season did. The Orange Bowl was great, and I don’t know if Bearcats fans ever thought it would be better than that. But 2009 proved that it was a program that could compete at the highest level in college football and be in that conversation for a national championship. Even the rise of Tony Pike in those two seasons is remarkable. From someone who wasn’t even a blip on the depth chart to the only quarterback to lead the team to back-to-back major bowls. It was such a remarkable rise for a team that you used to have to buy football season tickets just to get basketball season tickets. And in the Brian Kelly era, he came in and said this is not how it’s going to work. We’re going to be our own program. He left that legacy.
Brian Kelly: Yeah, if that (Texas-Nebraska game goes differently), I probably wouldn’t be at Notre Dame. I’d still be here and you guys would be sick and tired of me at Cincinnati. But it’s fate, and those things happen.
Egger: I don’t remember at the time feeling like some sort of injustice was done either in that Big 12 title game or afterward. For me, the triumph — as stupid as it sounds — was that night, for about 10 minutes, I was at least entertaining the possibility that this football program that nobody cared about was going to play for a national title. That was enough for me.
Pike: My sister wanted a puppy, and my mom and dad didn’t want to get one. She was pretty little at this time. And I told them that if we win the Big East, we get a puppy. And my parents are like yeah, sure. We named the puppy Lucy.
Binns: I would have never thought a simple touchdown catch would mean so much to a football program and a university and to a city, but it really matters. I’ve watched a lot of games, a lot of college football and pro football, and stuff like that doesn’t happen every day. With what was on the line — we would have lost it all if we lost that game — when you have big moments like that and it all comes together. I still think it took us some years after being gone to really realize how special it was.
Pead: That year was a city on fire. We played through ourselves and the love we had from the city. We took pride in lighting up the city, the university week after week. The crowds got bigger and bigger, the games started selling out, the crowds were showing up in all black, all white, all red. It was a collective effort.
Egger: For me, it’s the most iconic Cincinnati sports moment of the past 10 years. How could it not be? If Pike doesn’t complete that pass to Binns, they aren’t Big East Champions, they don’t play in the Sugar Bowl. So yeah, 100 percent, the most iconic.
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Binns: I’ve always thought the university and everyone in the community did a great job of making sure people don’t forget about that season. There was so much that went on and transpired immediately as the season concluded, and I think at the time, guys were a little stale. The next year didn’t go too well. But the school and the city of Cincinnati made sure to rally around us, and every year when Dec. 5 rolls around, we get such an outpouring of love from fans. It makes us feel like that game was as important to everybody else as it was to us, and I think that’s what makes it special.
(Top image: Ned Dishman / Getty Images)
