CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’
UC’S Luke Fickell at home in Ohio, but USC job looms
“Luke’s never worried about where he’s going.”
Before the biggest game of his coaching life, Luke Fickell sits surrounded by fans at his weekly radio show, filling them in on the Indiana win and the stakes of the battle to come.
“So who's making the trip to South Bend?” asks Dan Hoard, the show's host. Most of the red-and-black clad attendees raise their hands. Seeing a moment for levity during a stressful week, Fickell quickly raises his, too, and the room booms with laughter.
As he fields questions from the audience, Fickell's two sets of twin boys, ages 13 and 7, walk in. Fickell mentions to the crowd that during Cincinnati's off
week, he was able to see the elder boys' seventh-eighth grade football game.
“Coach, any good prospects in that game for your 2027 class?” a man asks.
You assume the guy is joking — that he actually knows a coaching star like Fickell won’t be at Cincinnati six years from now — but then maybe these Bearcats supporters know something you don’t.
Here, Fickell is the coach who stayed, putting an end to the three-and-out trend sparked by Mark Dantonio (to Michigan State), Brian Kelly (to Notre Dame) and Butch Jones (to Tennessee). In the past two years, Fickell already turned down serious advances from Michigan State and Tennessee.
But out west, there’s a dormant blueblood powerhouse now looking for a head coach.
On the surface, USC and Fickell might not be an obvious match, but USC athletic director Mike Bohn is the man who gave Fickell his shot at Cincinnati. If Bohn comes calling again later this fall, Fickell would have the rare chance to take over a traditional top-five program with an administration he already trusts.
“I keep telling him that Cincinnati is not a destination, that you gotta move on from there,” says John Cooper, who coached Fickell at Ohio State in the 1990s. “I spent seven years in the Pac-10, and I personally think Southern Cal is the best coaching job in football. I’ve heard people say that Luke may not want to live in California, but to me, it’s a no-brainer. I would go to Southern Cal in a heartbeat.”
That line of thinking is why Cincinnati fans panicked when Bohn fired Clay Helton. A guy with Fickell’s profile — three-time state champion heavyweight wrestler, 50-game starter at nose guard for the Buckeyes, a man who prides himself and his teams on grit above all — is exactly the type of coach Trojans backers believe is needed to bring USC back to prominence.
Of course, the qualities that could make Fickell desirable for USC will also make it harder to get him to Los Angeles. He is loyal, some would say almost to a fault.
“Luke’s never worried about where he’s going,” says Jim Tressel, who hired Fickell as an assistant coach at Ohio State in 2002.
The only person who might know where Fickell is going isn’t here. Amy Fickell is at daughter Luca’s volleyball game, on the go as always as the mother of six.
With her two youngest now in grade school, she’s hoping for a simpler life, not one that’s drastically more complicated.
When Amy met Luke, he was on a pre-med track, with the goal of becoming an eye doctor. But once he got an offer to join Cooper’s staff at Ohio State as a graduate assistant, “that eye doctor thing went out the window,” laughs Tennessee Titans coach Mike Vrabel, Fickell’s best friend.
After two years at Akron, Fickell was back in Columbus coaching at his alma mater under Jim Tressel, and it was time to start a family. With Luca, Amy was due during an Alamo Bowl trip, so doctors induced her beforehand so Luke could be there. Then he was off to San Antonio.
By 2011, Tressel had been mentoring Fickell for nine seasons,. After Tressel took the fall for players swapping gear and memorabilia for free tattoos, athletic director Gene Smith tapped Fickell, the native son, to steady the ship.
Ohio State went 6-7, including a loss to Michigan that ended a seven-game win streak in the series.
So Urban Meyer’s decision to name Fickell the Buckeyes co-defensive coordinator was a huge relief for the family. “I am not a mover,” Amy says. When the Cincinnati job came open after the 2016 season, Western Michigan’s P.J. Fleck and Western Kentucky’s Jeff Brohm were the hot names.
Fleck wasn’t interested in Cincinnati, and Purdue hired Brohm. Bohn zeroed in on Fickell and made the offer. Amy said yes.
He’s now 39-14 at Cincinnati. He’s done it his way, the Ohio way, starting with his first team’s winter workouts in the early-morning snow, in which each player had to earn their right to wear the Cincinnati paw.
It is clear that Amy Fickell does not want to move. She is hopeful that the promise of Cincinnati’s coming move to the Big 12, a Power Five conference, will provide Luke with a fresh mission, a higher hill to climb.
“Everyone thinks football, I think about my kids, my family. ‘Do I want to raise my kids in this place?’ “Amy says. “So you kind of look at those things first. We pray a lot about it, and you go from there.”
But when asked if moving to Los Angeles was a firm “no,” she knew better than to rule it out.
“You never know what the future can hold,” Amy says.