Cincinnati Bearcats Football Makes Major Change to Camp Higher Ground Preseason Practice Setup

The Bearcats are making a big change to their 2026 preseason football lead-up in the next few weeks. Camp Higher Ground is out, and the Indoor Practice Facility is fully in. The Enquirer's Scott Springer noted that the team is not going to eastern Indiana for a stay at Camp Higher Ground this month.

The program had been going there for a good chunk of fall camp for the past 27 seasons, but that is no more. It's a sound decision considering how much money the boosters and overall program have invested in its new practice facility on campus.

“The University of Cincinnati and UC Athletics are grateful for the 27 years of football spent at the Higher Ground Conference and Retreat Center and the relationships built with Chuck and Brenda Hail, Mark Lingle and the Church of the Nazarene. With the opening of the Sheakley Indoor Practice Facility and Performance Center, it makes competitive and operational sense to fully utilize a facility that provides everything our program needs in one location, including a state-of-the-art weight room, training room, and recovery areas," The university said in a statement to The Enquirer.

The article noted Cincinnati will save $250,000 by not staying there for the scheduled week-long stint.

They have every possible tool they could need at the IPF, and it may actually be a hindrance technologically to do practice at Higher Ground when they have so much state-of-the-art access right on campus.

The whole roster will probably be pretty happy about this change. Higher Ground has never been a very popular destination for players to practice at when asking around the depth chart in recent years.

That whole defensive depth chart is trying to dial into a new 3-4 blitzing scheme under new defensive coordinator Nate Woody. Head coach Scott Satterfield discussed it on ESPN 1530 last month.

"It's going well. I think it's slow. When you think about spring practice, there are 15 opportunities there, and Coach Woody and the staff are learning the new players and trying to figure out what they can do and can't do," Satterfield said. "As we go through the summer, we're starting to install back over and really just kind of repeating that, and then when we get to the fall camp, we'll do the same thing, kind of start over, reinstall that as well to be able to do a lot of different things. I think there's a lot of variety. You're going to be able to see different coverages, a lot of different blitz packages, mixing things up.

"These Big 12 quarterbacks are so talented nowadays that you just can't fit the same defense. You've got to be able to mix it up against those guys, but one thing I think that stands out defensively is we did get a lot bigger at the back end with our DBs, both corners have great length and really good size, the safeties are very impressive with what they can do with their size."

Check out the full report from Springer here.

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