Bearcats Lose Three-Star Commit to Big 12 Rival on 2025 Signing Day

CINCINNATI — The Bearcats football team dropped a commitment from three-star tight end Xavier Anderson to West Virginia. According to 247Sports, Anderson is ranked 1,907th nationally and 107th among tight ends. He flipped last week but went public with the decision on signing day.

Still, they've retained most of the strong talent in the 2026 class, including their only four-star signee in Avon (Ohio) defensive tackle Lance Dawson. He was the final member of the class to sign on Wednesday.

According to 247Sports, Dawson is ranked 416th nationally and 44th among defensive tackles. The 6-5, 250-pound talent had 12 offers from schools like Bowling Green and Miami (OH) as Cincinnati's 12th commit in the class when he decided.

Dawson was Cincinnati's first defensive tackle commit of the class, which is down to 22 players and may fall just inside the top 60 classes nationally.

UC head coach Scott Satterfield oversaw a third consecutive season with at least four losses among the final five games to end a campaign and discussed how important late-season wins are before losing to TCU.

“I think it's huge. Eight sounds a lot better than seven," Satterfield said last week. "As you head into signing day on Wednesday, and then as we're starting to gather names for the portal, I think that's huge, too. The better you can do win-wise, it's going to help. Playing on the road against a really good TCU team and getting another win, that'd be awesome. It says a lot about our program; it says a lot about our guys' resiliency. We have dropped the last three, and all three of those teams are really good teams.

"This team is good too, so here's another great opportunity. We didn't finish the last few, so how can we go out, finish these games, and get this win? I think it also gets the bad taste out of your mouth. As you head into the off-season, bowl season, winning is just so much better, as you head throughout December and the bowl game too, as you’re headed to the offseason.”

Cincinnati leaders like Satterfield and Zach Grant will discuss the new class later today.

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