This is the second post in a series that will work as a companion piece to the "Contendah" series, where I examined the top-five most popular teams in potential conference expansion discussions: Syracuse, Notre Dame, Pitt, Louisville, and Missouri. MilCardFan gave us his thoughts on Nebraska, too.

Now, I'm going to be going over the teams that always find their way into discussion for reasons that elude me. Last time, I wrote about Iowa State. This time, it's our friends down south, Cincinnati, in the crosshairs.

Another year? Maybe two?

I'm still needlessly steaming over the Cincinnati website proclaiming its football team "Ohio's BCS team" for a very short time in December, before the BCS match-ups were announced. After the bowl game loss to Virginia Tech, Cincinnati signed Brian Kelly to an extension, meaning that whenever he takes the Notre Dame job - or a job at any other major power that lures him away - the buyout will be a little bit bigger. Nevertheless, whenever conference expansion rears its head, the Ohio team-of-the-now outside of OSU is always brought up. This time around, it's Cincinnati, fresh off its first BCS appearance - a 20-7 snoozer loss to the Hokies - before 57,000 people in a dreary Orange Bowl. Nevertheless, the talk of potentially adding another Ohio team - any Ohio team - is sticking around.

Cincinnati just made the move to the Big East in 2005, coming over from C-USA. In that time frame, the 'Cats have gone an underwhelming 16-12 in their conference, winning it only when Bill "Guh-hyuck" Stewart took over at West Virginia. This is not a knock on Brian Kelly - he took them to 11 wins and may get another double-digit win total this season. However, it's far from the greatest of records in far from the greatest of conferences, in a real money sport. In the other money sport, the Bearcats aren't faring much better despite their storied history; they haven't sniffed the NCAA tournament since 2005 with the departure of Huggy Bear to Kansas State. Quite simply, the record of Cincinnati athletics of late is not particularly inspiring, looking beyond their short time as "Ohio's BCS team" and the current success under Brian Kelly.

Benefits for the conference:

- If Cincinnati were to join the conference tomorrow, it would be bringing Brian Kelly along with it. Kelly is arguably one of the top-10 coaches in the country, and his presence alone would make the Big Ten a more competitive conference.

- Obviously, it would set up a natural rivalry with Ohio State, and where only a few smoldering embers from the time Cincinnati beat Ohio State two years in a row to win the basketball national title exist, there would be a new gridiron rivalry. Whether or not it would be competitive or a laugher in the vein of the UM-MSU rivalrly remains to be seen.

Drawbacks for the conference:

- Unless the conference gets really good, really fast, simply joining the Big  Ten won't keep Kelly around. He'll have to a) stay competitive, b) be assured that he'll be benefiting in recruiting, and c) get paid more money than what heavy hitters like Notre Dame may offer him.

- We aren't exactly opening up a whole new world here as far as markets go; Cincinnati ranks below Columbus in market size, coming in at 38th

- If you're an academics-type person guy, UC is a Tier 3 school according to the US News and World Report College Rankings 2009

Will it happen?

I see no reason for it to happen. When Brian Kelly leaves, UC's football team will resume being a 7-5, 8-4 type team that occasionally makes the Poinsettia Bowl or something, but which is no real threat to break into the upper tier of the Big East, a conference that has its own share of troubles. This isn't a move that would expand into new markets greatly, invigorate the Big Ten's collective fanbase, or drop insane amounts of cash monies into the coffers of Big Ten big wigs.

Am I being too harsh on the 'Cats? Is my relative indifference toward them blinding me to potential good side effects of their addition? Discuss in the comments.