Oct 14, 2023; Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; A view of the Cincinnati and Big XII logo on an end zone pylon before a game between the Iowa State Cyclones and the Cincinnati Bearcats at Nippert Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Aaron Doster-Imagn Images Aaron Doster-Imagn Images

Cincinnati Football 'Starving' to Find Winning Ways This Fall

Originally posted on Cincinnati Bearcats on SI
By Russell Heltman | Last updated Jul 11, 2025 8:07 AM ET

Walt Stewart and UC football are "starving" to climb out of the Big 12 basement this fall and get back to their winning ways from earlier this decade.

The defensive line coach made a firm statement on his From The 513 appearance this week.

"Starving, if I lift my shirt up you'll see my ribs right now," Stewart told Tony Pike. "This is a place that wins. Let's make no bones about it. And you know, a part of why I even came here was because of the understanding of what the transition was going to entail. The difficulty in the facility being built, and we still got to practice, the difficulty of going from G5 to Power Four, the difficulty of we playing these teams and we playing these teams now, or, 'Hey, we're recruiting against this crop of teams now,' all of a sudden now we're recruiting against a different level of competition.

"That's why I came back here. That's why I wanted to be back here. And so now we are in a position where we've built this thing out the past three years, where now it's hard to contain it, right? It's hard to contain what we gonna do when the ball kicks off on Saturday? It's hard to contain it, because as a coach, we get to see this thing build up in the work that we've been putting in the past three years. And so the guys understand that now it's time to go ahead and make a statement. And that's what this year is going to be about for us, in a lesser degree, to go out there and get this thing going in a direction that we want to be. And we've been putting in the work, right? You got to put the time in, right? It ain't no shortcuts. This is football."

Stewart has a deep trenches group to work with, headlined by Dontay Corleone as one of the best defensive tackles in the sport.

Both men have been crucial in building up the culture that is clearly miles ahead of what it was in Scott Satterfield's first season. Increased talent, a chip on the shoulder, a new facility to lean on.

So many factors are pointing in the direction of Cincinnati turning this ship around over the next five months.